Cyber-physical systems are computer-based systems in which computers and digital networks are "embedded" in everyday products and infrastructures, altering their behavior in often safety-critical ways. For example, computer-based systems in vehicles – cars, airplanes, trains, ships – and their transportation infrastructure are increasingly taking on tasks of control, navigation, route guidance, traffic safety, and optimization. From mere assistance systems supporting human operators, these systems continuously evolve to higher levels of automation. In road transport, for example, they set out to perform driving tasks in part autonomously, partly in cooperation with other technical systems and the human operators.

The research area Cooperative Critical Systems focuses its research on how these systems can be developed and built such that they are

• functionally safe – i.e., their operation can be guaranteed to not endanger the environment or human beings,
• IT-secure – the systems must not be vulnerable, and the privacy of users must not be compromisable (by "hackers," "data thieves," etc.),
• comfortable and intuitive to use – they offer meaningful adaptation to humans and avoid "automation surprises",
• able to take into account the cognitive and emotional states of human operators.

This inter-disciplinary and cross-faculty research joins researchers from Computer Science, Psychology, Medicine & Health-Services Research, and Physics, who together investigate processes and methods for the development of these embedded systems. They focus on human-centred engineering, formal verification, validation of functional and non-functional properties, and bidirectional man-machine interaction with its technical, psychological and neuronal foundations. The research area is excellently connected regionally, nationally, and internationally: regionally through collaborative research and strategy development, for example, with OFFIS and the DLR Institute of Software Engineering for Future Mobility, as well as the joint DFG Research Training Group CAUSE (Concepts and Algorithms for – and Usage of – Self-Explaining Digitally Controlled Systems) together with the related research centers at the Universities of Bremen and TU Hamburg. Nationally and internationally, it is connected through numerous joint projects such as the transatlantic program PIRE (Partnership for International Research and Education) with the Universities of TU Munich, UC Berkeley, and Vanderbilt. The research area also established and promotes an international and inter-disciplinary master degree program on “Engineering of Socio-Technical Systems” to educate young scientists for the research area.