Advances in technology mean that computer-controlled physical devices that currently still require human operators, such as automobiles, trains, airplanes, and medical treatment systems, could operate entirely autonomously and make rational decisions on their own. Autonomous cars and drones are a concrete and highly publicized face of this dream. Before this dream can be realized we must address the need for safety - the guaranteed absence of undesirable behaviors emerging from autonomy.

The confluence of new networked sensing technologies (e.g., cameras), distributed computational resources (e.g., cloud computing), and algorithmic advances (e.g., computer vision) are offering new and exciting opportunities for solving a variety of new problems that are of societal importance including emergency response, disaster recovery, surveillance, and transportation.

Tracking Fish Movement with a School of Gliding Robotic Fish This project is focused on developing the technology for continuously tracking the movement of live fish implanted with acoustic tags, using a network of relatively inexpensive underwater robots called gliding robotic fish.

Designing semi-autonomous networks of miniature robots for inspection of bridges and other large civil infrastructure According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the United States has 605102 bridges of which 64% are 30 years or older and 11% are structurally deficient. Visual inspection is a standard procedure to identify structural flaws and possibly predict the imminent collapse of a bridge and determine effective precautionary measures and repairs.

This Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) award supports research to enable the automated monitoring of building and infrastructure construction projects. The purpose of construction monitoring is to provide developers, contractors, subcontractors, and tradesmen with the information they need to easily and quickly make project control decisions. These decisions have a direct impact on the overall efficiency of a construction project. Given that construction is a $800 billion industry, gains in efficiency could lead to enormous cost savings, benefiting both the U.S. economy and society.

Advances in technology mean that computer-controlled physical devices that currently still require human operators, such as automobiles, trains, airplanes, and medical treatment systems, could operate entirely autonomously and make rational decisions on their own. Autonomous cars and drones are a concrete and highly publicized face of this dream. Before this dream can be realized we must address the need for safety - the guaranteed absence of undesirable behaviors emerging from autonomy.

This project aims to enable cyber-physical systems that can be worn on the body in order to one day allow their users to touch, feel, and manipulate computationally simulated three-dimensional objects or digital data in physically realistic ways, using the whole hand. It will do this by precisely measuring touch and movement-induced displacements of the skin in the hand, and by reproducing these signals interactively, via new technologies to be developed in the project.

The project investigates a formal verification framework for artificial pancreas (AP) controllers that automate the delivery of insulin to patients with type-1 diabetes (T1D). AP controllers are safety critical: excessive insulin delivery can lead to serious, potentially fatal, consequences. The verification framework under development allows designers of AP controllers to check that their control algorithms will operate safely and reliably against large disturbances that include patient meals, physical activities, and sensor anomalies including noise, delays, and sensor attenuation.

More than one million people including many wounded warfighters from recent military missions are living with lower-limb amputation in the United States. This project will design wearable body area sensor systems for real-time measurement of amputee's energy expenditure and will develop computer algorithms for automatic lower-limb prosthesis optimization. The developed technology will offer a practical tool for the optimal prosthetic tuning that may maximally reduce amputee's energy expenditure during walking.

As self-driving cars are introduced into road networks, the overall safety and efficiency of the resulting traffic system must be established and guaranteed. Numerous critical software-related recalls of existing automotive systems indicate that current design practices are not yet up to this challenge. This project seeks to address this problem, by developing methods to analyze and coordinate networks of fully and partially self-driving vehicles that interact with conventional human-driven vehicles on roads.