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You may not have heard the term “cyber-physical systems” yet, but you probably will hear it some time in the next few years. And chances are, if you’re reading this column, you already work on some sort of cyberphysical system. So let’s try to figure out what this term means—you can use it to impress your boss. Developers have already begun work on cyber-physical systems, the next step forward in computing. To a first order, these systems involve control/computing co-design. What does that mean? After all, we’ve had computers attached to stuff for a long time. Why, you may ask, do we need a new term to describe what we’ve been doing for years?