Due to low operating cost and patient safety, ultrasound is widely accepted as one of the best forms of medical imaging compared to similar technologies, such as Computer Tomography (CT) scans or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Still, there can be large variability in image quality obtained by different experts imaging the same patient, which can affect successful diagnosis and patient treatment. This problem becomes even more pronounced across patients. Consequently, to decrease this variability this project will develop imaging techniques that are not passive but are based on real-time ultrasound beam control and adaptation, while facilitating best use of operator expertise to obtain the most informative images. Such new active ultrasound systems, where expert users with varying levels of training interact with a smart ultrasound device to improve medical imaging and facilitate diagnosis, will provide significant performance gains compared to present systems that are only manually controlled. This project will also have a significant societal impact in accurate, safe, and cost-effective diagnosis of many medical conditions, such as cancers or liver fibrosis. For instance, the use of such systems for breast cancer diagnosis will significantly reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies, which currently cost more than $1 billion annually in the US alone. At the same time this technology can enable a variety of other imaging applications that rely on different forms of ultrasound, such as mapping of the heart chambers using Doppler ultrasound or identifying the mechanical properties of materials in structures for failure prognosis. Specifically, the goal of this project is the development of an active ultrasound system where user expertise is employed to refine the control process, while autonomous elasticity (or viscoelasticity) mapping improves image quality and allows human operator to best use their skills for both optimization and diagnosis. The project's research products include: (i) data fusion techniques for ultrasound elastography; (ii) methods for interactive ultrasound elastography; and (iii) framework for safe and efficient device implementation. The ultrasound system will be validated on a test-bed based on suitable laboratory phantoms and real-time control of existing ultrasound devices. Investigators will focus on the unique aspects of this novel paradigm that, compared to existing methods, include: (1) new active, user-machine, imaging techniques improving on the characterization of the mechanical properties of tissue; and (2) the systematic transition of algorithms and user interfaces to embedded computers for safe execution by the device. This requires overcoming intellectual challenges related to the integration of visco-elastography mapping and human-on-the-loop ultrasound control, as well as synthesis of new theoretical results drawing from computational mechanics, controls and estimation, and embedded systems design. The project also has extensive education and outreach components, including curriculum development focused on design of safety-critical medical cyber-physical systems that exhibit highly dynamical system behaviors and plant uncertainty, human interactions, and the need for real-time implementation. The outreach component of this project will also improve the pre-college students' awareness of the potential and attractiveness of a research and engineering career.

Fisheries employ 260 million people globally and fish are a primary animal protein source for roughly 40% of the world's population. Fishing effort has increased worldwide over the past few decades, leading to concerns over the incidental capture (termed "bycatch") of non-target species, especially endangered species such as sea turtles, sharks, and marine mammals. Globally, bycatch of sea turtles is especially problematic as recent estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands of turtles are killed annually in fishing gear, representing the greatest known threat to their continued survival. This project addresses this problem through cyber-physical system-enabled technologies. This project builds on an observation about fish behavior that species respond differently to the light spectrum and that can be used to modulate their behaviors. This smart nets project extends that observation to determine signatures for sensing modalities of different species. The intent is to develop fishing gear, specifically fishing nets, that can deter non-target species. The project uses machine learning to determine effective cues, e.g., light and sound that uses the least amount of power possible to prevent an endangered species from capture in the nets without decreasing the fishermen's target catch. Using underwater cameras with standard video, infrared, and sonar to monitor species behavior to various signatures, it builds a database of the responses for each species under varying oceanic environment conditions. The project plans large-scale follow-up studies in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This research on CPS technology for the fishing industry will be invaluable to the design of the next-generation of CPS-enabled fishing nets.

The nation's critical infrastructures are increasingly dependent on systems that use computers to control vital physical components, including water supplies, the electric grid, airline systems, and medical devices. These are all examples of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) that are vulnerable to attack through their computer systems, through their physical properties such as power flow, water flow, chemistry, etc., or through both. The potential consequences of such compromised systems include financial disaster, civil disorder, even the loss of life. The proposed work significantly advances the science of protecting CPS by ensuring that the systems "do what they are supposed to do" despite an attacker trying to make them fail or do harm. In this convergent approach, the key is to tell the CPS how it is supposed to behave and build in defenses that make sure each component behaves and works well with others. The proposed work has a clear transition to industrial practice. It will also enhance education and opportunity by opening up securing society as a fascinating discipline for K-12 students to follow. The objective of the proposed project is to produce, from untrusted components, a trusted Cyber-physical system (CPS) that is resilient to security attacks and failures. The approach will rely on information flows in both the cyber and physical subsystems, and will be validated experimentally on high fidelity water treatment and electric power CPS testbeds. The project brings together concepts from distributed computing, control theory, machine learning, and estimation theory to synthesize a complete mitigation of the security and operational threats to a CPS. The proposed method's key difference from current methods is that security holes will be identified and plugged automatically at system design time, then enforced during runtime without relying solely on secure boundaries or firewalls. The system will feature the ability to identify and isolate a malfunctioning device or cyber-physical intrusion in real-time by validating its operation against fundamental scientific/engineering principles and learned behavior. A combined mathematical/data science approach will be used to generate governing invariants that are enforced at system runtime. Invariants are a scientific approach grounded in the system's physics coupled with machine learning and real-time scheduling approaches embedded in the CPS. Robust state estimation will account for errors in measurement and automated security domain construction and optimization to reduce the cost of evaluation without sacrificing coverage. The successful outcome of this research will lead to improved national security across various CPS infrastructures which, in turn, will improve economic and population health and security. The work can be taken to industry for deployment in critical infrastructures. The project will stimulate interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) through the development of a water-themed tabletop exercise for K-12 and helping current college students develop an interest in outreach through the experiential learning aspects of developing the tabletop exercise.

The goal of this project is improved situation awareness for autonomous vehicles across many different networks. The approach is new theory and abstractions for systems where potentially moving physical systems join and leave the network at a high rate. Making these kinds of cyber-physical systems (CPS) efficient and safe requires leveraging the sensor information from other proximate vehicles over the network: this will enable vehicles to have much higher situational awareness--effectively seeing around corners. However, computation must be performed fast enough to accurately control the physical system, and coordination over networks makes this even more challenging. The research program is paired with an educational initiative integrated into the extensive mentoring program of the researchers, with an emphasis on involving students of diverse backgrounds. This project investigates CPSEdge, a software platform deployed at the network "edge", which aggregates sensor information from nearby vehicles, and intelligently shares resulting plans of action. CPSEdge leverages its network proximity to vehicles, and is carefully designed to reply to vehicles fast enough to keep up with a quickly changing physical environment. The tools and techniques developed for CPSEdge will offer greater situational awareness to autonomous vehicles, and improve the responsiveness, reliability, and security of the software platforms that manage them. CPSEdge is built on a new process abstraction that is lightweight and can scale up to very large systems, even under significant churn, while providing increased reliability and security. This abstraction is managed by the CPSEdge system to ensure that the requisite computation is conducted in real-time with the physical system. Sensor data will be fused to generate a probabilistic model of the environment, providing global planning for nearby vehicles.

The nation's critical infrastructures are increasingly dependent on systems that use computers to control vital physical components, including water supplies, the electric grid, airline systems, and medical devices. These are all examples of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) that are vulnerable to attack through their computer systems, through their physical properties such as power flow, water flow, chemistry, etc., or through both. The potential consequences of such compromised systems include financial disaster, civil disorder, even the loss of life. The proposed work significantly advances the science of protecting CPS by ensuring that the systems "do what they are supposed to do" despite an attacker trying to make them fail or do harm. In this convergent approach, the key is to tell the CPS how it is supposed to behave and build in defenses that make sure each component behaves and works well with others. The proposed work has a clear transition to industrial practice. It will also enhance education and opportunity by opening up securing society as a fascinating discipline for K-12 students to follow. The objective of the proposed project is to produce, from untrusted components, a trusted Cyber-physical system (CPS) that is resilient to security attacks and failures. The approach will rely on information flows in both the cyber and physical subsystems, and will be validated experimentally on high fidelity water treatment and electric power CPS testbeds. The project brings together concepts from distributed computing, control theory, machine learning, and estimation theory to synthesize a complete mitigation of the security and operational threats to a CPS. The proposed method's key difference from current methods is that security holes will be identified and plugged automatically at system design time, then enforced during runtime without relying solely on secure boundaries or firewalls. The system will feature the ability to identify and isolate a malfunctioning device or cyber-physical intrusion in real-time by validating its operation against fundamental scientific/engineering principles and learned behavior. A combined mathematical/data science approach will be used to generate governing invariants that are enforced at system runtime. Invariants are a scientific approach grounded in the system's physics coupled with machine learning and real-time scheduling approaches embedded in the CPS. Robust state estimation will account for errors in measurement and automated security domain construction and optimization to reduce the cost of evaluation without sacrificing coverage. The successful outcome of this research will lead to improved national security across various CPS infrastructures which, in turn, will improve economic and population health and security. The work can be taken to industry for deployment in critical infrastructures. The project will stimulate interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) through the development of a water-themed tabletop exercise for K-12 and helping current college students develop an interest in outreach through the experiential learning aspects of developing the tabletop exercise.

The push towards deploying autonomous-driving capabilities in vehicles is happening at breakneck speed. Semi-autonomous features are becoming increasingly common, and fully autonomous vehicles at mass-market scales are on the horizon. Cameras are cost-effective sensors, so computer-vision techniques have loomed large in implementing autonomous features. In a vehicle, these techniques must function "in real time." Unfortunately, this requirement lies at the heart of a significant disconnect: when computer-vision researchers refer to "real time," they usually mean "real fast"; in contrast, certifiable automotive systems must be "real time" in the sense of being able to predictably react to input information (such as a detected pedestrian) within specified deadlines so that adverse outcomes (such as striking a pedestrian) are provably precluded. The goal of this project is to eliminate this disconnect. It will do so through research on several fronts. First, a real-time computer-vision programming framework will be created by extending OpenVX, which is a recently ratified standard intended for developing computer-vision applications for embedded systems. Second, new computer-vision algorithms that exploit the features of this programming framework will be created, and methods will be developed to transform existing algorithms to make them "real time" in a predictability sense. Third, an experimental evaluation of "real-fast" vs. "real-time" computer vision will be conducted using driving simulators, sub-scale autonomous vehicles, and advanced testing infrastructure at General Motors. While industry is pushing hard in the area of autonomous driving, autonomous vehicles will never become a common mode of transportation unless methods for certifying real-time safety are produced. This project will focus on a key aspect of certification: validating the real-time correctness of computer-vision applications. The results that are produced will be made available to the world at large through open-source software. This software will include the new programming framework to be produced as well as tools for validating the real-time correctness of applications developed using this framework. In this project, a special emphasis will be placed on outreach to girls and women, as three female graduate students will be involved in the project. Such outreach will include: events involving the Graduate Women in Computer Science (GWiCS) group at the University of North Carolina (UNC), which hosts an annual research symposium targeted toward undergraduate women and other under-represented minorities; Tar Heel Hack, a hackathon for local middle and high school girls; the UNC Girls Who Code Club, which provides local girls in grades 6-12 with a community for learning about computer science; and the UNC Computer Science Department's annual Open House and Science Expo. These events will include hackathon projects as well as demos of a driving simulator and a sub-scale autonomous car.

The goal of this project is to explore vehicle platooning at scale in Smart and Connected Communities. The approach is the development of techniques and models that provide incentives for vehicles to join platoons and maintain their platoon memberships. Connected vehicle technology helps in forming vehicle platoons (virtual trains of vehicles traveling with small gaps between them) with benefits including improved energy efficiency, increased road capacity, and enhanced mobility. Vehicles in a platoon may benefit differently depending on where they are in the virtual train (for example, the lead saves less energy compared to a vehicle in the middle). As such, some vehicles may not be willing to join a platoon, or stay in one as better opportunities for platoon formation arise. This project explores how platoons with these competing goals will be formed and controlled, so as to understand how to motivate vehicles to participate in them. The Mcity testbed is part of the validation of the research work, and workshops involving local high-school and college students are planned. A stable platoon structure does not contain any coalition of vehicles who could increase their individual utilities by trading their platoon memberships. Given the dynamic nature of traffic streams, forming and maintaining stable platoon structures is a complex task, and requires accounting for both local and network-level conditions at the time of platoon formation. This proposal introduces a general framework that enhances optimal-control-based trajectory planning models by enabling them to also account for network level traffic conditions. This proposal further integrates stable platoon formation into the enhanced trajectory planning models, enabling them to incorporate both local and network-level information to form behaviorally compatible platoon structures that stay stable in a dynamic traffic stream.

The goal of this research is to enable a new era of low-energy mobile robotic Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The approach is the simultaneous design of the computing hardware with the computer algorithms, with input from the physics of the system. Applications include, but are not limited to, insect-size robotic bees for artificial pollination, robotic water striders for environmental monitoring, miniature underwater autonomous vehicles for inspection, orally-administered medical robotic vehicles that can intelligently navigate the digestive system, robotic gliders that can operate in the air or underwater for months at a time, and many more. The results will enable low-power computing for artificial intelligence and autonomy to complement the existing low-energy, miniature actuation and sensing systems that have already been developed. This will enable low-energy, miniature mobile robotic CPSs that can still provide provable guarantees on completeness, optimality, robustness and safety. This project will focus on the development of novel algorithms and novel computing hardware for miniature, energy-efficient mobile robotic CPS. The proposed research will enable low-energy computation for full autonomy by way of minimizing energy consumption during design time and run time, by simultaneously designing the algorithms and the computing hardware. Decision making algorithms will minimize computing energy during run time, for instance, by considering motions that may not require heavy computation for perception and planning. The project will demonstrate the new methods by constructing the smallest fully-autonomous aerial robotic vehicle ever built. We believe the proposed foundational research and the proposed demonstration will kickstart a new cyber-physical systems subfield at the intersection of the mobile robotics literature and the computing hardware (circuits) literature.

This project aims to develop non-intrusive and universal vibration sensing schemes that can detect the abnormal vibrations of a running machine. Towards this goal, the researchers propose a system that first uses the backscatter signals in commercial off the shelf RFID systems to accurately measure machine vibrations, and then uses machine learning and signal processing techniques to detect abnormal machine vibration patterns so that machine operators can be alerted to take actions before the machine fails. This project represents an emerging space driving new CPS and Internet of Things concepts for machinery safety. It can be used for the prognostic monitoring of not only indoor machines, but also outdoor appliances and civil infrastructures, such as drilling system monitoring, pumping system monitoring, pipeline system monitoring, and bridge monitoring. The proposed system is expected to impact manufacturing and economy. This project will bridge the communities between Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering; and foster interaction and communication among them. It will also facilitate the effort of the researchers on attracting and mentoring undergraduate students and underrepresented graduate students in research. Furthermore, the researchers will integrate the research results from this project into both undergraduate and graduate curricula. This project has two key technical objectives: to develop vibration measurement schemes using RFID systems and to develop abnormal vibration pattern recognition schemes based on the measured vibration signals. For vibration sensing, the basic idea is to measure the machine vibrations through random and low-frequency readings of the tag using the RFID reader, where each reading is viewed as one sampling of the vibration. For abnormal vibration pattern detection, the basic idea is to build base line models based on the measured vibration readings and then classify real time vibration readings of a running machine as being either normal or abnormal. The proposed system would have several advantages over prior art in machine health monitoring , e.g., nonintrusive, inexpensive, accurate, and easily deployable including in non-line-of-sight scenarios.

The goal of this project is to investigate how self-driving, electric vehicles transporting passengers on demand (a system referred to as autonomous mobility-on-demand, or AMoD) can enable optimized, coupled control of the power and transportation networks. The key observation is that the AMoD technology will give rise to complex couplings between the power and transportation networks, namely couplings between charging demand and electricity prices as people move around a city. The hypothesis is that by exploiting such couplings through control and optimization, AMoD systems will lead to lower electricity generation costs and higher integration levels of intermittent renewable energy resources such as wind and solar, while providing more convenient transportation. The results of this project will provide guidelines to transportation stakeholders and policy-makers regarding the deployment of autonomous vehicles on a societal scale, benefitting the U.S. economy by fostering clean and efficient future transportation systems. This project will devise theoretical models and optimization tools for the characterization of the aforementioned couplings and for the system-level control of AMoD with the power network in the loop. The key technical idea is to cast the coupled power and transportation networks in the formal framework of flow optimization, whereby city districts, charging stations, and roads are abstracted as nodes and edges of a graph, and the movements of customers, vehicles, and energy are abstracted as flows over such a graph. This project will then devise a control framework to optimize over the decision variables, e.g., vehicles' routes, charging decisions, and power generation schedules.