Editorial: Secure and Safe MetaControl for Cyber Physical Systems

Welcome to the twelfth issue of 2023 in the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica (JAS).In the sixth issue of 2023, I systematically addressed the latest development of MetaVehicles, and sorted out some important contributions published in the IEEE/CAA JAS focusing on control, estimation, and optimization of automated vehicles with reliability, security, efficiency, and intelligence.When shifting the perspective to cyber-physical systems (CPSs), the styles or paradigms of control and filtering are going through major changes benefiting from the widespread applications of both cloud computing and digital twins.Particularly, the desired performance and management functions of CPSs under the virtual and real framework will be achieved via Metaverse technologies and strict system analysis involving behavior recognition of users, decision-making processes as well as parameter design and optimization.It is evident that the system's performance and cost are synthetic reflections of its behavior in both cyberspace and the real world [1].This kind of control paradigm can be referred to as MetaControl [2].It should be pointed out that MetaControl is built upon cyberspace and hence security threats are naturally inherited and inevitably enhanced due to the ever-increasing complexity and diversity of system functionalities while faults in the physical space are also a big concern.As such, new methods of control, filtering, and optimization should be creatively developed to satisfy the requirement of external security in cyberspace and internal safety in the physical space of CPSs.At IEEE/CAA JAS, we value and demonstrate the latest advancement in secure and safe MetaControl for cyber-physical systems.In this editorial, I collected eighteen articles published in IEEE/CAA JAS in the recent three years, relevant to this interesting topic.Specifically, I classify them into the following three groups. 1) Passively secure control and filteringIt should be pointed out that malicious attacks that occur in CPSs could appear differences in the form, strength, and stealthiness due to the tight integration of virtual cyberspace and real physical space in comparison with traditional control systems.Therefore, it is essential to provide innovative design concepts to generate control commands or reconstruct system states based on only measured, but potentially corrupted information.To tolerate unpredictable anomalies caused by