Electronics designed for use in aerospace vehicles.
Project
Breakthrough: CPS-Security: Towards Provably Correct Distributed Attack-Resilient Control of Unmanned-Vehicle-Operator Networks
Inherent vulnerabilities of information and communication technology systems to cyber-attacks (e.g., malware) impose significant security risks to Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). This is evidenced by a number of recent accidents. Noticeably, current distributed control of CPS is not really attack-resilient (ensuring task completion despite attacks). Although provable resilience would significantly lift the trustworthiness of CPS, existing defenses are rather ad-hoc and mainly focus on attack detection. In addition, while network attacks have been extensively studied, resilient-to-malware distributed control has been rarely investigated. This project aims to bridge the gap. It aims to investigate provably correct distributed attack-resilient control of CPS. The project will focus on a representative class of CPS, namely unmanned-vehicle-operator networks, and its four main research thrusts are: (1) The development of a distributed attack-resilient control framework to ensure task completion of multiple vehicles despite network attacks and malware attacks, (2) The synthesis of novel distributed attack-resilient control algorithms to deal with network attacks, (3) The design of estimation algorithms to detect malware attacks on vehicles, and computationally efficient algorithms which allow clean vehicles to avoid the collision with the vehicles compromised by malware, and (4) The validation of the cost-effectiveness of the proposed distributed attack-resilient control framework via a principled systematic evaluation plan. The research findings profoundly impact CPS security of a variety of engineering disciplines beyond unmanned-vehicle-operator networks, including smart grid, smart buildings and intelligent transportation systems. The proposed research is interdisciplinary and involves interactions among security, control, distributed algorithms and robotics. This will lead to educational and training opportunities that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries for high-school, undergraduate and graduate students in STEM.
1505664
Off
Pennsylvania State University
Minghui Zhu
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1505664&HistoricalAwards=false
Peng Liu
Submitted by Minghui Zhu on March 31st, 2016
Event
ViPES 2016
4th Workshop on Virtual Prototyping of Parallel and Embedded Systems (ViPES'2016) The 4th Workshop on Virtual Prototyping of Parallel and Embedded Systems (ViPES 2016) will be held at Samos Island, Greece on July 17th, 2016. ViPES 2016 is co-located with the International Conference on Embedded Computer Systems: Architectures, Modeling, and Simulation (SAMOS). Virtual prototyping stands for the development of hardware/software systems without using a real hardware prototype, i.e.
Submitted by Anonymous on March 24th, 2016
Event
RTN 2016
14th International Workshop on Real-Time Networks (RTN 2016) PRESENTATION The Real-Time Networks (RTN) is a satellite workshop of the 28th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2016), the premier European venue for presenting research into the broad area of real-time and embedded systems. The RTN 2016 workshop is the fourteenth in the series of workshops that started at the 2002 ECRTS conference. No edition took however place in 2015.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 15th, 2016
Announcement
Call for Proposals - Global City Teams Challenge Funding Opportunities

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the 2016 Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC; see http://www.nist.gov/cps/sagc.cfm) with a kickoff meeting on November 12-13, 2015, in Gaithersburg, MD. This meeting brought together city planners and representatives from technology companies, academic institutions, and non-profits with the aim of fostering teams that will contribute to an overall vision for Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) - effectively integrating networked information systems, sensing and communication devices, data sources, decision-making, and physical infrastructure to transform communities by improving quality of life, environmental health, social well-being, educational achievement, or overall economic growth and stability.

NIST's GCTC builds upon the National Science Foundation's (NSF) longstanding investments in cyber-physical systems (CPS). NSF established the CPS program in 2008 to develop the principles, methodologies, and tools needed to deeply embed computational intelligence, communications, and control, along with new mechanisms for sensing, actuation, and adaptation, into physical systems. The NSF CPS program, which today includes the participation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Transportation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and National Institutes of Health, has funded a strong portfolio of projects that together have pushed the boundaries of fundamental knowledge and systems engineering in core science and technology areas needed to support an ever-growing set of application domains. CPS investments are enabling systems that are central to emerging S&CC infrastructure and services, including in areas such as intelligent transportation systems (ground, aviation, and maritime), building control and automation, advanced manufacturing (including cyber-manufacturing), healthcare and medical devices, and the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT). Dependability, security, privacy, and safety continue to be central priorities for the program in pursuing the vision of a world in which CPS dramatically improve quality of life. Along the way, the CPS program has also nurtured a vibrant CPS research community.

With this Dear Colleague letter (DCL), NSF is announcing its intention to fund EArly-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals to support NSF researchers participating in the NIST GCTC, with the goal of pursuing novel research on the effective integration of networked computing systems and physical devices that will have significant impact in meeting the challenges of Smart and Connected Communities. Researchers must be members of, or be seeking to establish, GCTC teams that build upon the results of previous or active NSF-funded projects, and must provide evidence of active team membership and participation as part of the submission. [Note that, while this DCL is aligned with NSF’s broader efforts in Smart and Connected Communities (see http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf15120), a key requirement for this DCL is active participation in a GCTC team.] Proposals should emphasize the fundamental research inherent to the real-world problems being addressed; the manner in which the proposed solutions will be adopted by one or more local communities; and the potential challenges with respect to both research and deployment. Successful proposals will quantify the magnitude of potential societal impacts; and will result in transformative, long-term benefits rather than incremental advances. Finally, proposals must address why the work is appropriate for EAGER funding (see details below), including what key risks will be mitigated to facilitate future high-reward advances and why the timing of the project will maximize the potential for success.

The deadline for submission of EAGERs is April 1, 2016, but earlier submissions are encouraged, and decisions will be made on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Submission of EAGER proposals will be via Fastlane or Grants.gov. EAGER submissions should follow the NSF's Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) II.D.2 (see http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=gpg). (As noted in the GPG, EAGER is a funding mechanism for supporting exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches. This work may be considered especially "high-risk/high-reward," for example, in the sense that it involves radically different approaches, applies new expertise, or engages novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives.)

An investigator may be included in only one submission in response to this DCL; if more than one is submitted, only the first one will be considered.

For further information, please contact the cognizant CPS program directors:

  • David Corman, CISE/CNS/CPS, dcorman@nsf.gov
  • Kishan Baheti, ENG/ECCS/EPCN, rbaheti@nsf.gov
  • Sylvia Spengler, CISE/IIS/CPS, sspengle@nsf.gov
  • Gurdip Singh, CISE/CNS/CSR, gsingh@nsf.gov
General Announcement
Not in Slideshow
Submitted by Anonymous on February 12th, 2016
Event
SAFECOMP 2016
The 35th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP2016) ABOUT SAFECOMP
Submitted by Anonymous on February 3rd, 2016
Event
MECO’2016
5th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing  (MECO’2016) Bar, Montenegro  | June 12-16, 2016 | http://embeddedcomputing.me
Submitted by Anonymous on January 28th, 2016
Project
CAREER: Co-Design of Networking and Decentralized Control to Enable Aerial Networks in an Uncertain Airspace
Airborne networking, unlike the networking of fixed sensors, mobile devices, and slowly-moving vehicles, is very challenging because of the high mobility, stringent safety requirements, and uncertain airspace environment. Airborne networking is important because of the growing complexity of the National Airspace System with the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This project develops an innovative new theoretical framework for cyber-physical systems (CPS) to enable airborne networking, which utilizes direct flight-to-to-flight communication for flexible information sharing, safe maneuvering, and coordination of time-critical missions. This project uses an innovative co-design approach that exploits the mutual benefits of networking and decentralized mobility control in an uncertain heterogeneous environment. The approach departs from the usual perspective that views physical mobility as communication constraints, communication as constraints for decentralized mobility control, and uncertain environment as constraints for both. Instead, approach taken here proactively exploits the constraints, uncertainty, and new structures with information to enable high-performance designs. The features of the co-design such as scalability, fast response, trackability, and robustness to uncertainty advance the core CPS science on decision-making for large-scale networks under uncertainty. The technological advances developed in this research will contribute to multiple fields, including mobile networking, decentralized control, experiment design, and general real-time decision making under uncertainty for CPS. Technology transfer will be pursued through close collaboration with industries and national laboratories. This novel research direction will also serve as a unique backdrop to inspire the CPS workforce. New teaching materials will benefit the future CPS workforce by equipping them with a knowledge base in networking and control. Broad outreach and dissemination activities that involve undergraduate student societies, K-12 school teaching, and public events, all stemming from the PI's current efforts, will be enhanced.
1453722
Off
University of North Texas
Yan Wan
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1453722&HistoricalAwards=false
Yan Wan Submitted by Yan Wan on December 22nd, 2015
Project
CPS: Breakthrough: Knowledge-Aware Cyber-Physical Systems
This project addresses the foundational problem of knowledge within cyber-physical systems (CPS), i.e., systems that combine aspects such as communication, computation, and physics. A single system observes its environment through sensors and interacts through actuators. Neither is perfect. Thus, the CPS's internal view of the world is blurry and its actions are imprecise. CPS are still analyzed with methods that do not distinguish between truth in the world and an internal view thereof, resulting in a mismatch between the behavior of theoretical models and their real-world counterparts. How could they be trusted to perform safety-critical tasks? This project addresses this critical insufficiency by developing methods to reason about knowledge and learning in CPS. The project pursues the development of new logical principles for verifying knowledge-aware CPS. This project investigates how to make the mismatch between the world and the partial perception through sensors explicit and how to achieve provably correct control in theory as well as practice despite this mismatch. By investigating changing knowledge in a changing world, this project contributes to a fundamental feature without which CPS can never be truly safe and efficient at the same time. The project's broader significance and importance are a result of the widespread attention that CPS gain in many safety-critical areas, such as in aviation and automotive industries. One reason for safety gaps in such CPS is that formal verification techniques are still largely knowledge-agnostic, and verifiable solutions overly pessimistic. This project addresses these issues and provides tools that allow for incorporating knowledge about the environment's intentions into the models to derive provably correct, but justifiably optimistic, and thus efficient, behavior. By their logical nature, these techniques are applicable to a wide range of CPS and, thus, contribute significantly to numerous applications. Results obtained within this project will be demonstrated in CPS models and laboratory robot scenarios, and will be shared in courses and with industrial partners. The technical approach that this project pursues develops a new modeling language, logic, and proof calculus for verifying knowledge-aware CPS. The knowledge paradigm used allows CPS controllers to seamlessly acquire knowledge about the world but also about other agents in the system, i.e., other controllers. Knowledge is the key to interactions between different agents. This project investigates how an explicit model of world perception and agent intentions - and knowledge of these perceptions and intentions - allows CPS agents to act, based on more efficient, but still provably safe control in multi-agent scenarios. The methods will be implemented in the verification tool KeYmaera and demonstrated in formal verification on different case study applications such as car scenarios.
1446712
Off
Carnegie-Mellon University
Andre Platzer
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1446712&HistoricalAwards=false
Andre Platzer Submitted by Andre Platzer on December 22nd, 2015
Project
CPS: Synergy: Adaptive Management of Large Energy Storage Systems for Vehicle Electrification
Large battery systems with 100s/1000s cells are being used to power various physical platforms. For example, automobiles are transitioning from conventional powertrains to (plug-in) hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs). To achieve the desired efficiency of EVs, significant improvements are needed in the architecture and algorithms of battery management. This project will develop a new comprehensive battery management architecture, called Smart Battery Management System (SBMS). The research is expected to bridge the wide gap existing between cyber-physical system (CPS) research and electrification industry communities, provide environment-friendly solutions, increase the awareness of CPS, and develop skilled human resources. This project will incorporate and enhance a battery management system (BMS) by including battery state-of-charge (SoC) and state-of-health (SoH) algorithms as well as power management strategies on both pack and cell levels. Specifically, it consists of five main research tasks: (i) design a dynamically reconfigurable energy storage system to tolerate harsh internal and external stresses; (ii) develop cell-level thermal management algorithms; (iii) develop efficient, dependable charge and discharge scheduling algorithms in hybrid energy storage systems; (iv) develop a comprehensive, diagnostic/prognostic (P/D) algorithm with system parameters adjusted for making optimal decisions; and (v) build a testbed and evaluate the proposed architecture and algorithms on the testbed. This research will advance the state-of-the-art in the management of large-scale energy storage systems, extending their life and operation-time significantly, which is key to a wide range of battery-powered physical platforms. That is, SBMS will enable batteries to withstand excessive stresses and power physical platforms for a much longer time, all at low costs. SBMS will also serve as a basic framework for various aspects of CPS research, integrating (cyber) dynamic control and P/D mechanisms, and (physical) energy storage system dynamics.
1446117
Off
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Kang Shin
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1446117&HistoricalAwards=false
Kang Shin Submitted by Kang Shin on December 21st, 2015
Project
CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Engineering Safety-Critical Cyber-Physical-Human Systems
This cross-disciplinary project brings together a team of engineering and computer science researchers to create, validate, and demonstrate the value of new techniques for ensuring that systems composed of combinations of hardware, software, and humans are designed to operate in a truly synergistic and safe fashion. One notable and increasingly common feature of these "Cyber-Physical-Human" (CPH) systems is that the responsibility for safe operation and performance is typically shared by increasingly sophisticated automation in the form of hardware and software, and humans who direct and oversee the behavior of automation yet may need to intervene to take over manual or shared system control when unexpected environmental situations or hardware or software failures occur. The ultimate goal is to achieve levels of safety and performance in system operation that exceed the levels attainable by either skilled human operators or completely autonomous systems acting alone. To do so, the research team will draw upon their expertise in the design of robust, fault-tolerant control systems, in the design of complexity-reduction architectures for software verification, and in human factors techniques for cognitive modeling to assure high levels of human situation awareness through effective interface design. By doing so, the safety, cost and performance benefits of increasingly sophisticated automation can be achieved without the frequently observed safety risks caused by automation creating greater distance between human operators and system operation. The techniques will be iteratively created and empirically evaluated using experimentation in human-in-the-loop simulations, including a medium-fidelity aircraft and flight simulator and a simulation of assistive automation in a medical context. More broadly, this research is expected to impact and inform the engineering of future CPH systems generally, for all industries and systems characterized by an increasing use of hardware and software automation directed and overseen by humans who provide an additional layer of safety in expected situations, Examples include highway and automotive automation, aerospace and air traffic control automation, semi-automated process control systems, and the many forms of automated systems and devices increasingly being used in medical contexts, such as the ICU and operating room. This research is also expected to inform government and industry efforts to provide safety certification criteria for the technologies used in CPH systems, and to educate a next generation of students trained in the cross-disciplinary skills and abilities needed to engineer the CPH systems of the future. The investigators will organize industry, academic, and government workshops to disseminate results and mentor students who are members of underrepresented groups through the course of this research project.
1330077
Off
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Alex Kirlik
-
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1330077&HistoricalAwards=false
Submitted by Alex Kirlik on December 21st, 2015
Subscribe to Avionics