Applications of CPS technologies essential for the functioning of a society and economy.
Project
CPS: Frontiers: Collaborative Research: Foundations of Resilient CybEr-Physical Systems (FORCES)
This CPS Frontiers project addresses highly dynamic Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), understood as systems where a computing delay of a few milliseconds or an incorrectly computed response to a disturbance can lead to catastrophic consequences. Such is the case of cars losing traction when cornering at high speed, unmanned air vehicles performing critical maneuvers such as landing, or disaster and rescue response bipedal robots rushing through the rubble to collect information or save human lives. The preceding examples currently share a common element: the design of their control software is made possible by extensive experience, laborious testing and fine tuning of parameters, and yet, the resulting closed-loop system has no formal guarantees of meeting specifications. The vision of the project is to provide a methodology that allows for complex and dynamic CPSs to meet real-world requirements in an efficient and robust way through the formal synthesis of control software. The research is developing a formal framework for correct-by-construction control software synthesis for highly dynamic CPSs with broad applications to automotive safety systems, prostheses, exoskeletons, aerospace systems, manufacturing, and legged robotics. The design methodology developed here will improve the competitiveness of segments of industry that require a tight integration between hardware and highly advanced control software such as: automotive (dynamic stability and control), aerospace (UAVs), medical (prosthetics, orthotics, and exoskeleton design) and robotics (legged locomotion). To enhance the impact of these efforts, the PIs are developing interdisciplinary teaching materials to be made freely available and disseminating their work to a broad audience.
1239054
Off
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Saurabh Amin
https://www.cps-forces.org/research.htm
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1239054&HistoricalAwards=false
Asuman Ozdaglar
Saurabh Amin Submitted by Saurabh Amin on December 18th, 2015
Project
CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: A Cyber-Physical Infrastructure for the "Smart City"
The project aims at making cities "smarter" by engineering processes such as traffic control, efficient parking services, and new urban activities such as recharging electric vehicles. To that end, the research will study the components needed to establish a Cyber-Physical Infrastructure for urban environments and address fundamental problems that involve data collection, resource allocation, real-time decision making, safety, and security. Accordingly, the research is organized along two main directions: (i) Sensing and data acquisition using a new mobile sensor network paradigm designed for urban environments; and (ii) Decision Support for the "Smart City" relying on formal verification and certification methods coupled with innovative dynamic optimization techniques used for decision making and resource allocation. The work will bring together and build upon methodological advances in optimization under uncertainty, computer simulation, discrete event and hybrid systems, control and games, system security, and formal verification and safety. Target applications include: a "Smart Parking" system where parking spaces are optimally assigned and reserved, and vehicular traffic regulation. The research has the potential of revolutionizing the way cities are viewed: from a passive living and working environment to a highly dynamic one with new ways to deal with transportation, energy, and safety. Teaming up with stakeholders in the Boston Back Bay neighborhood, the City of Boston, and private industry, the research team expects to establish new collaborative models between universities and urban groups for cutting-edge research embedded in the deployment of an exciting technological, economic, and sociological development.
1239030
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University of Connecticut
Robert Gao
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1239030&HistoricalAwards=false
Submitted by Robert Gao on December 18th, 2015
Project
CPS: Frontiers: Collaborative Research: Foundations of Resilient CybEr-Physical Systems (FORCES)
This NSF Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Frontiers project "Foundations Of Resilient CybEr-physical Systems (FORCES)" focuses on the resilient design of large-scale networked CPS systems that directly interface with humans. FORCES aims to pr ovide comprehensive tools that allow the CPS designers and operators to combine resilient control (RC) algorithms with economic incentive (EI) schemes. Scientific Contributions The project is developing RC tools to withstand a wide-range of attacks and faults; learning and control algorithms which integrate human actions with spatio-temporal and hybrid dynamics of networked CPS systems; and model-based design to assure semantically consistent representations across all branches of the project. Operations of networked CPS systems naturally depend on the systemic social institutions and the individual deployment choices of the humans who use and operate them. The presence of incomplete and asymmetric information among these actors leads to a gap between the individually and socially optimal equilibrium resiliency levels. The project is developing EI schemes to reduce this gap. The core contributions of the FORCES team, which includes experts in control systems, game theory, and mechanism design, are the foundations for the co-design of RC and EI schemes and technological tools for implementing them. Expected Impacts Resilient CPS infrastructure is a critical National Asset. FORCES is contributing to the development of new Science of CPS by being the first project that integrates networked control with game theoretic tools and the economic incentives of human decision makers for resilient CPS design and operation. The FORCES integrated co-design philosophy is being validated on two CPS domains: electric power distribution and consumption, and transportation networks. These design prototypes are being tested in real world scenarios. The team's research efforts are being complemented by educational offerings on resilient CPS targeted to a large and diverse audience.
1238962
Off
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Demosthenis Teneketzis
https://www.cps-forces.org/research.htm
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National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1238962&HistoricalAwards=false
Submitted by Demosthenis Teneketzis on December 18th, 2015
Project
CPS: Frontiers: Collaborative Research: Foundations of Resilient CybEr-Physical Systems (FORCES)
This NSF Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Frontiers project "Foundations Of Resilient CybEr-physical Systems (FORCES)" focuses on the resilient design of large-scale networked CPS systems that directly interface with humans. FORCES aims to pr ovide comprehensive tools that allow the CPS designers and operators to combine resilient control (RC) algorithms with economic incentive (EI) schemes. Scientific Contributions The project is developing RC tools to withstand a wide-range of attacks and faults; learning and control algorithms which integrate human actions with spatio-temporal and hybrid dynamics of networked CPS systems; and model-based design to assure semantically consistent representations across all branches of the project. Operations of networked CPS systems naturally depend on the systemic social institutions and the individual deployment choices of the humans who use and operate them. The presence of incomplete and asymmetric information among these actors leads to a gap between the individually and socially optimal equilibrium resiliency levels. The project is developing EI schemes to reduce this gap. The core contributions of the FORCES team, which includes experts in control systems, game theory, and mechanism design, are the foundations for the co-design of RC and EI schemes and technological tools for implementing them. Expected Impacts Resilient CPS infrastructure is a critical National Asset. FORCES is contributing to the development of new Science of CPS by being the first project that integrates networked control with game theoretic tools and the economic incentives of human decision makers for resilient CPS design and operation. The FORCES integrated co-design philosophy is being validated on two CPS domains: electric power distribution and consumption, and transportation networks. These design prototypes are being tested in real world scenarios. The team's research efforts are being complemented by educational offerings on resilient CPS targeted to a large and diverse audience.
1238959
Off
Vanderbilt University
Xenofon Koutsoukos
https://www.cps-forces.org/research.htm
-
National Science Foundaiton
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1238959&HistoricalAwards=false
Xenofon Koutsoukos Submitted by Xenofon Koutsoukos on December 18th, 2015
Project
CPS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Architecture and Distributed Management for Reliable Mega-scale Smart Grids
The objective of this research is to establish a foundational framework for smart grids that enables significant penetration of renewable DERs and facilitates flexible deployments of plug-and-play applications, similar to the way users connect to the Internet. The approach is to view the overall grid management as an adaptive optimizer to iteratively solve a system-wide optimization problem, where networked sensing, control and verification carry out distributed computation tasks to achieve reliability at all levels, particularly component-level, system-level, and application level. Intellectual merit. Under the common theme of reliability guarantees, distributed monitoring and inference algorithms will be developed to perform fault diagnosis and operate resiliently against all hazards. To attain high reliability, a trustworthy middleware will be used to shield the grid system design from the complexities of the underlying software world while providing services to grid applications through message passing and transactions. Further, selective load/generation control using Automatic Generation Control, based on multi-scale state estimation for energy supply and demand, will be carried out to guarantee that the load and generation in the system remain balanced. Broader impact. The envisioned architecture of the smart grid is an outstanding example of the CPS technology. Built on this critical application study, this collaborative effort will pursue a CPS architecture that enables embedding intelligent computation, communication and control mechanisms into physical systems with active and reconfigurable components. Close collaborations between this team and major EMS and SCADA vendors will pave the path for technology transfer via proof-of-concept demonstrations.
1232601
Off
Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
Panganamala Kumar
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1232601&HistoricalAwards=false
Panganamala Kumar Submitted by Panganamala Kumar on December 18th, 2015
Project
CPS: Medium: Collaborative Research: The Cyber-Physical Challenges of Transient Stability and Security in Power Grids
The national transmission networks that deliver high voltage electric power underpin our society and are central to the ongoing transformation of the American energy infrastructure. Transmission networks are very large and complicated engineering systems, and "keeping the lights on" as the transformation of the American energy infrastructure proceeds is a fundamental engineering challenge involving both the physical aspects of the equipment and the cyber aspects of the controls, communications, and computers that run the system. The project develops new principles of cyber-physical engineering by focusing on instabilities of electric power networks that can cause blackouts. It proposes novel approaches to analyze these instabilities and to design cyber-physical control methods to monitor, detect, and mitigate them. The controls must perform robustly in the presence of variability and uncertainty in electric generation, loads, communications, and equipment status, and during abnormal states caused by natural faults or malicious attacks. The research produces cyber-physical engineering methodologies that specifically help to mitigate power system blackouts and more generally show the way forward in designing robust cyber-physical systems in environments characterized by rich dynamics and uncertainty. Education and outreach efforts involve students at high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels, as well as dissemination of results to the public and the engineering and applied science communities in industry, government and universities.
1219917
Off
Iowa State University
Ian Dobson
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National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1219917&HistoricalAwards=false
Ian Dobson Submitted by Ian Dobson on December 18th, 2015
Event
RAMMMNets 2016
RAMMMNets 2016: Workshop on Real-time Analytics in Multi-latency, Multi-Party, Metro-scale Networks  Co-Chairs: Chaitan Baru, U.S. National Science Foundation Stephen Dennis, U.S. Department of Homeland Security  Background 
Submitted by Anonymous on December 16th, 2015
Event
ECYPS’2016
4th EUROMICRO/IEEE Workshop on Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems (ECYPS’2016) ECYPS’2016 - the 4th EUROMICRO/IEEE Workshop on Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems will be held in the scope of MECO’2016 - the 5th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing. It is devoted to cyber-physical systems (CPS) for modern applications that usually require high-performance, low energy consumption, high safety, security and reliability.
Submitted by Anonymous on December 8th, 2015
Announcement
U.S. Department of Transportation Launches Smart City Challenge to Create a City of the Future

 

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Smart City Challenge

About The Challenge

The USDOT has pledged up to $40 million (funding subject to future appropriations) to one city to help it define what it means to be a “Smart City “and become the country’s first city to fully integrate innovative technologies – self-driving cars, connected vehicles, and smart sensors – into their transportation network.

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Today, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced a Smart City Challenge to create a fully integrated, first-of-its-kind city that uses data, technology and creativity to shape how people and goods move in the future.  The winning city will be awarded up to $40 million from the USDOT (funding subject to future appropriations) to implement bold, data-driven ideas by making transportation safer, easier, and more reliable. Additionally, Paul G. Allen's Vulcan Inc., has announced its intent to award up to $10 million to the USDOT winner of the Smart City Challenge. The winning city will need to work with Vulcan to secure this funding. The Smart City Challenge builds on the USDOT's Beyond Traffic draft report issued in February of 2015.  Beyond Traffic reveals that our nation's aging infrastructure is not equipped to deal with a dramatically growing population in new regions throughout the country and the need for increased mobility options in developing megaregions. This public-private collaboration represents the USDOT and Vulcan Inc.'s joint belief that creativity and innovation will be absolutely essential to meeting the significant transportation challenges of the future. Lessons learned from this competition will be used in other cities to improve networks nationwide and demonstrate a practical path to replacing carbon-based fuel consumption. The USDOT welcomes the participation of other entities who share the vision and goals in the Notice of Funding Opportunity found at https://www.transportation.gov/smartcity/nofo. 

"This is an opportunity for the winning city to define what it means to be a 'Smart City' when it comes to transportation.  We encourage cities to develop their own unique vision, partnerships and blueprints to demonstrate to the world what a fully integrated, forward-looking transportation network looks like," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. "America can remain the global leader in maintaining the safest, most efficient system in the world: I am looking for mayors who share that belief to join us in pushing the boundaries of what is possible." The USDOT is kicking off its Smart City Challenge today by inviting cities to submit a high-level description of their vision of a SmartCity by February 4, 2016, consistent with the Notice of Funding Opportunity. The USDOT will then announce five finalists in March 2016, who will then compete for up to $40 million to be awarded to one city in June 2016. The Smart City Challenge will allow the selected city to demonstrate how advanced data, technologies, and applications can be used to reduce congestion, keep travelers safe, protect the environment, respond to climate change, and support economic vitality. The following are attributes of the ideal Smart City Challenge candidate:

  •  Mid-sized city with a population between approximately 200,000 and 850,000 people within city limits as of the 2010 Census;
  • A population density typical of a mid-sized city using 2010 Census data;
  • Represents a significant portion (more than 15 percent) of the overall population of its urban area using 2010 Census data;
  • An established public transportation system
  • An environment that is conducive to demonstrating proposed strategies;
  • Leadership and capacity to carry out the demonstration throughout he period of performance.

"Transformative innovation takes ambitious support from both the government and the private sector. That's why we're partnering with the DOT to inspire innovative, scalable, proof-of-concept solutions to address some of our planet's most urgent challenges," said Vulcan President and Chief Operating Officer Barbara Bennett.  "We hope that together we can spur change by demonstrating what is possible through replicable models." Applicants are invited to submit ideas - designed to address or enhance community needs - across a range of innovation and data-driven platforms. Critical system improvements that increase safety, reduce carbon emissions, and enhance mobility are especially encouraged for review. Specifically, these innovations will connect people, vehicles, public transportation, and infrastructure through ITS, sharing economy, and other technologies that improve the way Americans move, whether it be to drop off kids at school, pick up their groceries, get to work, and receive critical services. Secretary Foxx will host a national webcast on December 8, and a Smart City Forum will be web streamed on December 15 to discuss this funding opportunity, the application requirements, and the award selection process, and to answer relevant questions from interested parties. Participation in the webinars is not mandatory to submit an application under this solicitation. To view the December 8 webcast, visit: https://www.transportation.gov/smartcity. To register for the forum, visit: https://www.transportation.gov/smartcity/smartcitiesforum. 

The first round of applications is due February 4, 2016. Cities interested in applying should visit this website to learn more.To learn more about the Smart City Challenge or to explore joining as a partner organization, visit: https://www.transportation.gov/smartcity. 

General Announcement
Not in Slideshow
Emily Wehby Submitted by Emily Wehby on December 8th, 2015
Event
IEEE UIC 2016
13th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (IEEE UIC 2016) Ubiquitous sensors, devices, networks and information are paving the way towards a smart world in which computational intelligence is distributed throughout the physical environment to provide reliable and relevant services to people.
Submitted by Anonymous on December 8th, 2015
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