Goal-oriented communications for future cyber–physical systems

Abstract

Future cyber–physical systems face a gap between surging data traffic and finite resources under stringent latency and reliability demands. Throughput-driven and latency-driven communication systems assign the same scheduling priority to all packets regardless of their relevance to the downstream task, which can undermine decision quality. Conversely, goal-oriented communications transmit only goal-relevant information, protecting control systems from destabilization due to indiscriminate data flooding. In this Review, we analyse how goal-oriented communications reshape cyber–physical system design across four tiers: networked sensing and control, decision-making, distributed intelligence and multimodal intelligence. The analysis reveals that task-level metrics, such as control error, inference accuracy and decision utility, rather than bit-level communication metrics, are key to ensuring reliable sensing, control and decision-making. We reframe cyber–physical communication from bit-level optimization toward task-oriented design, where communication decisions are driven by downstream task requirements. Finally, we posit a framework that will enable engineers and researchers to build intelligent cyber–physical systems. This framework will power smarter grids, safer autonomous vehicles and more adaptive industrial automation. This Review shows that transmitting targeted, goal-oriented bits rather than more data reshapes communication–performance trade-offs across four tiers of cyber-physical complexity, from control stability to multimodal intelligence.