The terms denote engineering domains that have high CPS content.
1239257 (Wu). Traditionally, buildings have been viewed as mere energy consumers; however, with the new power grid infrastructure and distributed energy resources, buildings can not only consume energy, but they can also output energy. As a result, this project removes traditional boundaries between buildings in the same cluster or between the cluster and power grids, transforming individual smart buildings into NetZero building clusters enabled by cyber-support tools. In this research, a synergistic decision framework is established for temporally, spatially distributed building clusters to work as an adaptive and robust system within a smart grid. The framework includes innovative algorithms and tools for building energy modeling, intelligent data fusion, decentralized decisions and adaptive decisions to address theoretical and practical challenges in next-generation building systems. The research develops cyber-physical engineering tools for demand side load management which has been identified as a major challenge by energy industries. It fundamentally transforms the current centralized and uni-directional power distribution business model to a decentralized and multi-directional power sharing and distribution business model, reducing overall energy consumption and allowing for optimal decisions in changing operation environments. Education and outreach efforts include developing novel educational modules disseminated at the K-12 levels and through the ASEE eGFI repository. Further educational impact occurs through integration with multiple undergraduate and graduate courses at each institution, and with community service groups. Impact is also expanded to the broader energy industry and the operation of healthcare delivery and urban transportation systems through our industry collaborations. http://swag.engineering.asu.edu/ 1239247 (Wen). Traditionally, buildings have been viewed as mere energy consumers; however, with the new power grid infrastructure and distributed energy resources, buildings can not only consume energy, but they can also output energy. As a result, this project removes traditional boundaries between buildings in the same cluster or between the cluster and power grids, transforming individual smart buildings into NetZero building clusters enabled by cyber-support tools. In this research, a synergistic decision framework is established for temporally, spatially distributed building clusters to work as an adaptive and robust system within a smart grid. The framework includes innovative algorithms and tools for building energy modeling, intelligent data fusion, decentralized decisions and adaptive decisions to address theoretical and practical challenges in next-generation building systems. The research develops cyber-physical engineering tools for demand side load management which has been identified as a major challenge by energy industries. It fundamentally transforms the current centralized and uni-directional power distribution business model to a decentralized and multi-directional power sharing and distribution business model, reducing overall energy consumption and allowing for optimal decisions in changing operation environments. Education and outreach efforts include developing novel educational modules disseminated at the K-12 levels and through the ASEE eGFI repository. Further educational impact occurs through integration with multiple undergraduate and graduate courses at each institution, and with community service groups. Impact is also expanded to the broader energy industry and the operation of healthcare delivery and urban transportation systems through our industry collaborations. http://swag.engineering.asu.edu/ 1239093 (Lewis). Traditionally, buildings have been viewed as mere energy consumers; however, with the new power grid infrastructure and distributed energy resources, buildings can not only consume energy, but they can also output energy. As a result, this project removes traditional boundaries between buildings in the same cluster or between the cluster and power grids, transforming individual smart buildings into NetZero building clusters enabled by cyber-support tools. In this research, a synergistic decision framework is established for temporally, spatially distributed building clusters to work as an adaptive and robust system within a smart grid. The framework includes innovative algorithms and tools for building energy modeling, intelligent data fusion, decentralized decisions and adaptive decisions to address theoretical and practical challenges in next-generation building systems. The research develops cyber-physical engineering tools for demand side load management which has been identified as a major challenge by energy industries. It fundamentally transforms the current centralized and uni-directional power distribution business model to a decentralized and multi-directional power sharing and distribution business model, reducing overall energy consumption and allowing for optimal decisions in changing operation environments. Education and outreach efforts include developing novel educational modules disseminated at the K-12 levels and through the ASEE eGFI repository. Further educational impact occurs through integration with multiple undergraduate and graduate courses at each institution, and with community service groups. Impact is also expanded to the broader energy industry and the operation of healthcare delivery and urban transportation systems through our industry collaborations.
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Drexel University
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National Science Foundation
Submitted by Jin Wen on December 18th, 2015
Effective engineering of complex devices often depends critically on the ability to encapsulate responsibility for tasks into modular agents and ensure those agents communicate with one another in well-defined and easily observable ways. When such conditions are followed, it becomes possible to detect where problems lie so they can be corrected. It also becomes possible to optimize the agents and their communications to improve performance. Cyber-physical systems (like robots, self-piloting aircraft, etc.) modify themselves to improve performance break those conditions in that some agent modules negotiate their own communications and decide their own actions, sometimes taking advantage of the physics of the world in ways we did not anticipate. This renders difficult application of standard engineering tools to accomplish critical fault diagnosis and design optimization. This project will produce analysis methods address the specific needs of cyber-physical systems that, by their natures, break the rules of convention. We will apply these new methods to the design and analysis of self-improving controllers for flapping-wing micro air vehicles. This work will provide advances in both model-checking related formal design methodologies and in module-based self-adaptive control in computationally resource constrained cyber-physical systems. The formal methods advances will significantly expand our ability to properly design and verify systems that tightly couple computation, sensors, and actuators. The specific test application addressed is significant to a number of nationally important security and defense efforts and will directly impact identified national priorities.
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Portland State University
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National Science Foundation
Submitted by Garrison Greenwood on December 18th, 2015
Cyber physical systems (CPSs) are merging into major mobile systems of our society, such as public transportation, supply chains, and taxi networks. Past researchers have accumulated significant knowledge for designing cyber physical systems, such as for military surveillance, infrastructure protection, scientific exploration, and smart environments, but primarily in relatively stationary settings, i.e., where spatial and mobility diversity is limited. Differently, mobile CPSs interact with phenomena of interest at different locations and environments, and where the context information (e.g., network availability and connectivity) about these physical locations might not be available. This unique feature calls for new solutions to seamlessly integrate mobile computing with the physical world, including dynamic access to multiple wireless technologies. The required solutions are addressed by (i) creating a network control architecture based on novel predictive hierarchical control and that accounts for characteristics of wireless communication, (ii) developing formal network control models based on in-situ network system identification and cross-layer optimization, and (iii) designing and implementing a reference implementation on a small scale wireless and vehicular test-bed based on law enforcement vehicles. The results can improve all mobile transportation systems such as future taxi control and dispatch systems. In this application advantages are: (i) reducing time for drivers to find customers; (ii) reducing time for passengers to wait; (iii) avoiding and preventing traffic congestion; (iv) reducing gas consumption and operating cost; (v) improving driver and vehicle safety, and (vi) enforcing municipal regulation. Class modules developed on mobile computing and CPS will be used at the four participating Universities and then be made available via the Web.
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University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
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National Science Foundation
Tian He Submitted by Tian He on December 18th, 2015
This project designs algorithms for the integration of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PEVs) into the power grid. Specifically, the project will formulate and solve optimization problems critical to various entities in the PEV ecosystem -- PEV owners, commercial charging station owners, aggregators, and distribution companies -- at the distribution / retail level. Charging at both commercial charging stations and at residences will be considered, for both the case when PEVs only function as loads, and the case when they can also function as sources, equipped with vehicle-to-home (V2H) or vehicle-to-grid (V2G) energy reinjection capability. The focus of the project is on distributed decision making by various individual players to achieve analytical system-level performance guarantees. Electrification of the transportation market offers revenue growth for utility companies and automobile manufacturers, lower operational costs for consumers, and benefits to the environment. By addressing problems that will arise as PEVs impose extra load on the grid, and by solving challenges that currently impede the use of PEVs as distributed storage resources, this research will directly impact the society. The design principles gained will also be applicable to other cyber-physical infrastructural systems. A close collaboration with industrial partners will ground the research in real problems and ensure quick dissemination of results to the marketplace. A strong educational component will integrate the proposed research into the classroom to allow better training of both undergraduate and graduate students. The details of the project will be provided at http://ee.nd.edu/faculty/vgupta/research/funding/cps_pev.html
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University of Notre Dame
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National Science Foundation
Submitted by Vijay Gupta on December 18th, 2015
Wireless sensor-actuator networks (WSAN) are systems consisting of numerous sensing and actuation devices that interact with the environment and coordinate their activities over a wireless communication network. This project studies "resilience" in WSANs. A resilient system is one that maintains an active awareness of surrounding threats and reacts to those threats in a manner that returns the system to operational normalcy in finite time. This project's approach to resilient WSANs rests on two fundamental trends. One trend uses machine-to-machine (M2M) communication networks that promise wireless networking with greater peak bit-rates and reliability than previously possible. The other trend comes from recent ideas that use quantization and event-triggered feedback in a unified manner to reduce bit rates required by real-time control systems. This project will evaluate and demonstrate this integrated control/communication approach to resilience on a multi-robotic testbed consisting of unmanned ground vehicles. The testbed will integrate M2M communication hardware/software with a multi-robot control architecture addressing task coordination and platform stabilization. This project broadens its impact through organizations and programs on and around the Notre Dame campus that facilitate industrial engagement and technology transfer. The project will engage undergraduate and graduate students to support the project's testbed and algorithm development. The project will augment and re-organize Notre Dame's Cyber-Physical System (CPS) curriculum by integrating the results of this project into courses.
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University of Notre Dame
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National Science Foundation
Submitted by Michael Lemmon on December 18th, 2015
This project explores balancing performance considerations and power consumption in cyber-physical systems, through algorithms that switch among different modes of operation (e.g., low-power/high-power, on/off, or mobile/static) in response to environmental conditions. The main theoretical contribution is a computational, hybrid optimal control framework that is connected to a number of relevant target applications where physical modeling, control design, and software architectures all constitute important components. The fundamental research in this program advances state-of-the-art along four different dimensions, namely (1) real-time, hybrid optimal control algorithms for power management, (2) power-management in mobile sensor networks, (3) distributed power-aware architectures for infrastructure management, and (4) power-management in embedded multi-core processors. The expected outcome, which is to enable low-power devices to be deployed in a more effective manner, has implications on a number of application domains, including distributed sensor and communication networks, and intelligent and efficient buildings. The team represents both a research university (Georgia Institute of Technology) and an undergraduate teaching university (York College of Pennsylvania) in order to ensure that the educational components are far-reaching and cut across traditional educational boundaries. The project involves novel, inductive-based learning modules, where graduate students team with undergraduate researchers.
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York College of Pennsylvania
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National Science Foundation
Patrick Martin Submitted by Patrick Martin on December 18th, 2015
Autonomous navigation in unknown and dynamic environments has been a major challenge for synthetic mobile robotic agents. On the other hand, insects can easily solve such complex navigational problems and demonstrate remarkably stable and optimized locomotion skills in almost any environment. This project aims to develop a mobile sensor network where insects are used as mobile biological-robotic (biobotic) nodes. Insects, in fact, build a "natural" sensor network through the use of their biological sensing organs and release of chemical, mechanical and optical cues to communicate the information to the rest of the group. In the scope of this project, a novel cyber-physical communication network will be established among the individual insect in addition to the aforementioned natural one. For this, insects will be equipped with synthetic electronic sensors to sense additional cues, neuromuscular stimulation systems to direct the control of the insect and microcontrollers with radios to establish an RF link between the insects. This novel network will enable operation of insect biobots in complicated and uncertain dynamic environments for applications such as environmental sensing and search-and-rescue operations after natural disasters. The unique interdisciplinary nature of this project will help engineers to reach to younger generations and train them to be able to look at engineering problems from a cyberphysical systems point of view. Planned activities include development of lab modules and demos by undergraduate and graduate students to teach K-12 students and their teachers through our on-going collaborations with educational partners. These demos will also be instrumental during nation level efforts to promote graduate education to underrepresented minority students.
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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National Science Foundation
Submitted by Tyson Hedrick on December 18th, 2015
Large-scale critical infrastructure systems, including energy and transportation networks, comprise millions of individual elements (human, software and hardware) whose actions may be inconsequential in isolation but profoundly important in aggregate. The focus of this project is on the coordination of these elements via ubiquitous sensing, communications, computation, and control, with an emphasis on the electric grid. The project integrates ideas from economics and behavioral science into frameworks grounded in control theory and power systems. Our central construct is that of a ?resource cluster,? a collection of distributed resources (ex: solar PV, storage, deferrable loads) that can be coordinated to efficiently and reliably offer services (ex: power delivery) in the face of uncertainty (ex: PV output, consumer behavior). Three topic areas form the core of the project: (a) the theoretical foundations for the ?cluster manager? concept and complementary tools to characterize the capabilities of a resource cluster; (b) centralized resource coordination strategies that span multiple time scales via innovations in stochastic optimal control theory; and (c) decentralized coordination strategies based on cluster manager incentives and built upon foundations of non-cooperative dynamic game theory. These innovations will improve the operation of infrastructure systems via a cyber-physical-social approach to the problem of resource allocation in complex infrastructures. By transforming the role of humans from passive resource recipients to active participants in the electric power system, the project will facilitate energy security for the nation, and climate change mitigation. The project will also engage K-12 students through lab-visits and lectures; address the undergraduate demand for power systems training through curricular innovations at the intersection of cyber-systems engineering and physical power systems; and equip graduate students with the multi-disciplinary training in power systems, communications, control, optimization and economics to become leaders in innovation.
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Cornell University
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National Science Foundation
Eilyan Bitar Submitted by Eilyan Bitar on December 18th, 2015
Effective engineering of complex devices often depends critically on the ability to encapsulate responsibility for tasks into modular agents and ensure those agents communicate with one another in well-defined and easily observable ways. When such conditions are followed, it becomes possible to detect where problems lie so they can be corrected. It also becomes possible to optimize the agents and their communications to improve performance. Cyber-physical systems (like robots, self-piloting aircraft, etc.) modify themselves to improve performance break those conditions in that some agent modules negotiate their own communications and decide their own actions, sometimes taking advantage of the physics of the world in ways we did not anticipate. This renders difficult application of standard engineering tools to accomplish critical fault diagnosis and design optimization. This project will produce analysis methods address the specific needs of cyber-physical systems that, by their natures, break the rules of convention. We will apply these new methods to the design and analysis of self-improving controllers for flapping-wing micro air vehicles. This work will provide advances in both model-checking related formal design methodologies and in module-based self-adaptive control in computationally resource constrained cyber-physical systems. The formal methods advances will significantly expand our ability to properly design and verify systems that tightly couple computation, sensors, and actuators. The specific test application addressed is significant to a number of nationally important security and defense efforts and will directly impact identified national priorities.
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Purdue University
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National Science Foundation
Submitted by Eric Matson on December 18th, 2015
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 provide 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.
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University of California at Berkeley
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National Science Foundation
S. Sastry Submitted by S. Sastry on December 18th, 2015
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