CPS: Medium: Hybrid Twins for Urban Transportation: From Intersections to Citywide Management
Lead PI:
Sharon Xuan Di
Co-PI:
Abstract

This Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) grant will focus on the development of an urban traffic management system, which is driven by public needs for improved safety, mobility, and reliability within metropolitan areas. Future cities will be radically transformed by the Internet of Things (IoT), which will provide ubiquitous connectivity between physical infrastructure, mobile assets, humans, and control systems. In particular, IoT and smart traffic management have the potential to significantly improve increasingly faltering transportation systems that account for over 25% of greenhouse gas emissions and over one trillion dollars of annual economic and social loss. The project develops a hybrid twin that operates in parallel with the real world at real-time resolution, leveraging machine learning and edge computing, to monitor surrounding traffic, send safety warnings to connected vulnerable users, and provide learning-based controls to traffic lights and automated vehicles. As such, the broader impacts include advancing the understanding of urban traffic modeling, computation, and simulation, and enriching transportation science with data science. The accompanying educational plan aims to broaden participation in computing and engineering by underrepresented minorities and women via outreach programs, including programs for Harlem public school teachers and K-12 students, as well as new graduate course development.

Performance Period: 10/01/2021 - 03/31/2025
Institution: Columbia University
Sponsor: NSF
Award Number: 2038984