The objective of this research is to develop methods for the operation and design of cyber physical systems in general, and energy efficient buildings in particular. The approach is to use an integrated framework: create models of complex systems from data; then design the associated sensing-communication-computation-control system; and finally create distributed estimation and control algorithms, along with execution platforms to implement these algorithms. A special emphasis is placed on adaptation. In particular, buildings and their environments change with time, as does the way in which buildings are used. The system must be designed to detect and respond to such changes. The proposed research brings together ideas from control theory, dynamical systems, stochastic processes, and embedded systems to address design and operation of complex cyber physical systems that were previously thought to be intractable. These approaches provide qualitative understanding of system behavior, algorithms for control, and their implementation in a networked execution platform. Insights gained by the application of model reduction and adaptation techniques will lead to significant developments in the underlying theory of modeling and control of complex systems. The research is expected to directly impact US industry through the development of integrated software-hardware solutions for smart buildings. Collaborations with United Technologies Research Center are planned to enhance this impact. The techniques developed are expected to apply to other complex cyber-physical systems with uncertain dynamics, such as the electric power grid. The project will enhance engineering education through the introduction of cross-disciplinary courses.

Effective response and adaptation to the physical world, and rigorous management of such behaviors through programmable computational means, are mandatory features of cyber physical systems (CPS). However, achieving such capabilities across diverse application requirements surpasses the current state of the art in system platforms and tools. Current computational platforms and tools often treat physical properties individually and in isolation from other cyber and physical attributes. They do not adequately support the expression, integration, and enforcement of system properties that span cyber and physical domains. This results in inefficient use of both cyber and physical resources, and in lower system effectiveness overall. This work investigates novel approaches to these important problems, based on modularizing and integrating diverse cyber-physical concerns that cross-cut physical, hardware, instruction set, kernel, library, and application abstractions. The three major thrusts of this research are 1) establishing foundational models for expressing, analyzing, enforcing, and measuring different conjoined cyber-physical properties, 2) conducting a fundamental re-examination of system development tools and platforms to identify how different application concerns that cut across them can be modularized as cyber-physical system aspects, and 3) developing prototype demonstrations of our results to evaluate further those advances in the state of the art in aspect-oriented techniques for CPS, to help assess the feasibility of broader application of the approach. The broader impact of this work will be through dissemination of academic papers, and open platforms and tools that afford unprecedented integration of cyber-physical properties.

The objective of the proposed research program is to develop, for the first time, the theory and methods needed for the design of networked control systems for chemical processes and demonstrate their application and effectiveness in the context of process systems of industrial importance. The proposed approach to achieving this objective involves the development of a novel mathematical framework based on nonlinear asynchronous systems to model the sensor and actuator network behavior accounting explicitly for the effect of asynchronous and delayed measurements, network communication and actuation. Within the proposed asynchronous systems framework, novel control methods will be developed for the design of nonlinear networked control systems that improve closed-loop stability, performance and robustness. The controller design methods will be based on nonlinear and predictive control theory and will have provable closed-loop properties. The development and implementation of networked control methods which take advantage of sensor and actuator networks is expected to significantly improve the operation and performance of chemical processes, increase process safety and reliability, and minimize the negative economic impact of process failures, thereby impacting directly the US economy. The integration of the research results into advanced-level classes in process control and the writing of a new book on ``Networked Process Control'' will benefit students and researchers in the field. The development of software, short courses and workshops and the on-going interaction of the PIs with an industrial consortium will be the means for transferring the results of this research into the industrial sector. Furthermore, the involvement of a diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students in the research will be pursued.

The objective of this research is to address issues related to the platform revolution leading to a third generation of networked control systems. The approach is to address four fundamental issues: (i) How to provide delay guarantees over communication networks to support networked control? (ii) How to synchronize clocks over networks so as to enable consistent and timely control actions? (iii) What is an appropriate architecture to support mechanisms for reliable yet flexible control system design? (iv) How to provide cross-domains proofs of proper performance in both cyber and physical domains? Intellectual Merit: Currently neither theory nor networking protocols provide solutions for communication with delay constraints. Coordination by time is fundamental to the next generation of event-cum-time-driven systems that cyber-physical systems constitute. Managing delays and timing in architecture is fundamental for cyberphysical systems. Broader Impact: Process, aerospace, and automotive industries rely critically on feedback control loops. Any platform revolution will have major consequences. Enabling control over networks will give rise to new large scale applications, e.g., the grand challenge of developing zero-fatality highway systems, by networking cars traveling on a highway. This research will train graduate students on this new technology of networked control. The Convergence Lab (i) has employed minority undergraduate students, including a Ron McNair Scholar, as well as other undergraduate and high school researchers, (ii) hosts hundreds of high/middle/elementary school students annually in Engineering Open House. The research results will be presented at conferences and published in open literature.

The objective of this research project is to achieve fundamental advances in software technology that will enable building cyber-physical systems to allow citizens to see the environmental and health impacts of their daily activities through a citizen-driven body-worn mobile-phone-based commodity sensing platform. The approach is to create aspect-oriented extensions to a publish-subscribe architecture, called Open Rich Services (ORS), to provide a highly extensible and adaptive infrastructure. As one example, ORS will enable highly adaptive power management that not only adapts to current device conditions, but also the nature of the data, the data's application, and the presence and status of other sensors in the area. In this way, ORS will enable additional research advances in power management, algorithms, security and privacy during the project. A test-bed called CitiSense will be built, enabling in-the-world user and system studies for evaluating the approach and providing a glimpse of a future enhanced by cyber-physical systems. The research in this proposal will lead to fundamental advances in modularity techniques for composable adaptive systems, adaptive power management, cryptographic methods for open systems, interaction design for the mobile context, and statistical inference under multiple sources of noise. The scientific and engineering advances achieved through this proposal will advance our national capability to develop cyber-physical systems operating under decentralized control and severe resource constraints. The students trained under this project will become part of a new generation of researchers and practitioners prepared to advance the state of cyber-physical systems for the coming decades.

The objective of this research is to scale up the capabilities of fully autonomous vehicles so that they are capable of operating in mixed-traffic urban environments (e.g., in a city such as Columbus or even New York or Istanbul). Such environments are realistic large-city driving situations involving many other vehicles, mostly human-driven. Moreover, such a car will be in a world where it interacts with other cars, humans, other external effects, and internal and external software modules. This is a prototypical CPS with which we have considerable experience over many years, including participation in the recent DARPA Urban Challenge. Even in the latter case, though, operation to date has been restricted to relatively “clean” environments (such as multi-lane highways and simpler intersections with a few other vehicles). The approach is to integrate multidisciplinary advances in software, sensing and control, and modeling to address current weaknesses in autonomous vehicle design for this complex mixed-traffic urban environment. All work will be done within a defined design-and-verification cycle. Theoretical advances and new models will be evaluated both by large-scale simulations, and by implementation on laboratory robots and road-worthy vehicles driven in real-world situations. The research address significant improvements to current methods and tools to enable a number of formal methods to move from use in limited, controlled environments to use in more complex and realistic environments. The theory, tools, and design methods that are investigated have potential application for a broad class of cyber-physical systems consisting of mobile entities operating in a semi-structured environment. This research has the potential to lead to safer autonomous vehicles and to improve economic competitiveness, the nation's transportation infrastructure, and energy efficiency. The richness of the domain means that expected research contributions can apply not only to autonomous vehicles but, also, to a variety of related cyber-physical systems such as service robots in hospitals and rescue robots used after natural disasters. The experimental research laboratory for the project is used for undergraduate and graduate courses and supports new summer outreach projects for high-school students. Research outcomes are integrated with undergraduate and graduate courses on component-based software.