The objective of this research is to design a semi-automated, efficient, and secure emergency response system to reduce the time it takes emergency vehicles to reach their destinations, while increasing the safety of non-emergency vehicles and emergency vehicles alike. Providing route and maneuver guidance to emergency vehicles and non-emergency vehicles will make emergency travel safer and enable police and other first responders to reach and transport those in need, in less time. This should reduce the number of crashes involving emergency vehicles and associated litigation costs while improving medical outcomes, reducing property damage, and instilling greater public confidence in emergency services. At the same time, non-emergency vehicles will also be offered increased safety and, with the reduction of long delays attributed to emergency vehicles, experience reduced incident-related travel time, which will increase productivity and quality of life for drivers. Incorporating connected vehicles into the emergency response system will also provide synergistic opportunities for non-emergency vehicles, including live updates on accident sites, areas to avoid, and information on emergency routes that can be incorporated into navigation software so drivers can avoid potential delays. While the proposed system will naturally advance the quality of transportation in smart cities, it will also provide a platform for future techniques to build upon. For example, the proposed system could be connected with emergency care facilities to balance the load of emergency patients at hospitals, and act as a catalyst toward the realization of a fully-automated emergency response system. New courses and course modules will be developed to recruit and better prepare a future workforce that is well versed in multi-disciplinary collaborations. Video demos and a testbed will be used to showcase the research to the public. The key research component will be the design of an emergency response system that (1) dynamically determines EV routes, (2) coordinates actions by non-emergency vehicles using connected vehicle technology to efficiently and effectively clear paths for emergency vehicles, (3) is able to adapt to uncertain traffic and network conditions, and (4) is difficult to abuse or compromise. The project will result in (1) algorithms that dynamically select EV routes based on uncertain or limited traffic data, (2) emergency protocols that exploit connected vehicle technology to facilitate emergency vehicles maneuvers, (3) an automation module to assist with decision making and maneuvers, and (4) an infrastructure and vehicle hardening framework that prevents cyber abuse. Experiments will be performed on a testbed and a real test track to validate the proposed research.

The wide-area measurement systems technology using Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) has been regarded as the key to guaranteeing stability, reliability, state estimation, and control of next-generation power systems. However, with the exponentially increasing number of PMUs, and the resulting explosion in data volume, the design and deployment of an efficient wide-area communication and computing infrastructure is evolving as one of the greatest challenges to the power system and IT communities. The goal of this NSF CPS project is to address this challenge, and construct a massively deployable cyber-physical architecture for wide-area control that is fast, resilient and cost-optimal (FRESCO). The FRESCO grid will consist of a suite of optimal control algorithms for damping oscillations in power flows and voltages, implemented on top of a cost-effective and cyber-secure distributed computing infrastructure connected by high-speed wide-area networks that are dynamically programmable and reconfigurable. The value of constructing FRESCO is twofold (1) If a US-wide communication network capable of transporting gigabit volumes of PMU data for wide-area control indeed needs to be implemented over the next five years then power system operators must have a clear sense of how various forms of delays, packet losses, and security threats affect the stability of these control loops. (2) Moreover, such wide-area communication must be made economically feasible and sustainable via joint decision-making processes between participating utility companies, and testing how controls can play a potential role in facilitating such economics. Currently, there is very limited insight into how the PMU data transport protocols may lead to a variety of such delay patterns, or dictate the economic investments. FRESCO will answer all of these questions, starting from small prototypical grid models to those with tens of thousands of buses. Our eventual goal will be to make FRESCO fully open-source for Transition to Practice (TTP). We will work with two local software companies in Raleigh, namely Green Energy Corporation and Real-Time Innovations, Inc. to develop a scalable, secure middleware using Data-Distribution Service (DDS) technology. Thus, within the scope of the project, we also expect to enrich the state-of-the-art cloud computing and networking technologies with new control and management functions. From a technical perspective, FRESCO will answer three main research questions. First, can wide-area controllers be co-designed in sync with communication delays to make the closed-loop system resilient and delay-aware, rather than just delay-tolerant This is particularly important, as PMU data, in most practical scenarios, will have to be transported over a shared resource, sharing bandwidth with other ongoing applications, giving rise to not only transport delays, but also significant delays due to queuing and routing. Advanced ideas of arbitrated network control designs will be used to address this problem. The second question we address is for cost. Given that there are several participants in this wide-area control, how much is each participant willing to pay in sharing the network cost with others for the sake of supporting a system-wide control objective compared to its current practice of opting for selfish feedback control only Ideas from cooperative game theory will be used to investigate this problem. The final question addresses security how can one develop a scientific methodology to assess risks, and mitigate security attacks in wide-area control? Statistical and structural analysis of attack defense modes using Bayesian and Markov models, game theory, and discrete-event simulation will be used to address this issue. Experimental demos will be carried out using the DETER-WAMS network, showcasing the importance of cyber-innovation for the sustainability of energy infrastructures. Research results will be broadcast through journal publications, and jointly organized graduate courses between NCSU, MIT and USC.

Laboratory-on-a-chip (LoC) technology is poised to improve global health through development of low-cost, automated point-of-care testing devices. In countries with few healthcare resources, clinics often have drugs to treat an illness, but lack diagnostic tools to identify patients who need them. To enable low-cost diagnostics with minimal laboratory support, this project will investigate domain-specific LoC programming language and compiler design in conjunction with device fabrication technologies (process flows, sensor integration, etc.). The project will culminate by building a working LoC that controls fluid motion through electronic signals supplied by a host PC; a forensic toxicology immunoassay will be programmed in software and executed on the device. This experiment will demonstrate benefits of programmable LoC technology including miniaturization (reduced reagent consumption), automation (reduced costs and uncertainties associated with human interaction), and general-purpose software-programmability (the device can execute a wide variety of biochemical reactions, all specified in software). Information necessary to reproduce the device, along with all software artifacts developed through this research effort, will be publicly disseminated. This will promote widespread usage of software-programmable LoC technology among researchers in the biological sciences, along with public and industrial sectors including healthcare and public health, biotechnology, water supply management, environmental toxicity monitoring, and many others. This project designs and implements a software-programmable cyber-physical laboratory-on-a-chip (LoC) that can execute a wide variety of biological protocols. By integrating sensors during fabrication, the LoC obtains the capability to send feedback in real-time to the PC controller, which can then make intelligent decisions regarding which biological operations to execute next. To bring this innovative and transformative platform to fruition, the project tackles several formidable research challenges: (1) cyber-physical LoC programming models and compiler design; (2) LoC fabrication, including process flows and cyber-physical sensor integration; and (3) LoC applications that rely on cyber-physical sensory feedback and real-time decision-making. By constructing a working prototype LoC, and programming a representative feedback-driven forensic toxicology immunoassay, the project demonstrates that the proposed system can automatically execute biochemical reactions that require a closed feedback loop. Expected broader impacts of the proposed work include reduced cost and increased reliability of clinical diagnostics, engagement with U.S. companies that use LoC technology, training of graduate and undergraduate students, increased engagement and retention efforts targeting women and underrepresented minorities, student-facilitated peer-instruction at UC Riverside, a summer residential program for underrepresented minority high-school students at the University of Tennessee, collaborations with researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and creation, presentation, and dissemination of tutorial materials to promote the adoption and use of software-programmable LoCs among the wider scientific community.

The wide-area measurement systems technology using Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) has been regarded as the key to guaranteeing stability, reliability, state estimation, and control of next-generation power systems. However, with the exponentially increasing number of PMUs, and the resulting explosion in data volume, the design and deployment of an efficient wide-area communication and computing infrastructure is evolving as one of the greatest challenges to the power system and IT communities. The goal of this NSF CPS project is to address this challenge, and construct a massively deployable cyber-physical architecture for wide-area control that is fast, resilient and cost-optimal (FRESCO). The FRESCO grid will consist of a suite of optimal control algorithms for damping oscillations in power flows and voltages, implemented on top of a cost-effective and cyber-secure distributed computing infrastructure connected by high-speed wide-area networks that are dynamically programmable and reconfigurable. The value of constructing FRESCO is twofold (1) If a US-wide communication network capable of transporting gigabit volumes of PMU data for wide-area control indeed needs to be implemented over the next five years then power system operators must have a clear sense of how various forms of delays, packet losses, and security threats affect the stability of these control loops. (2) Moreover, such wide-area communication must be made economically feasible and sustainable via joint decision-making processes between participating utility companies, and testing how controls can play a potential role in facilitating such economics. Currently, there is very limited insight into how the PMU data transport protocols may lead to a variety of such delay patterns, or dictate the economic investments. FRESCO will answer all of these questions, starting from small prototypical grid models to those with tens of thousands of buses. Our eventual goal will be to make FRESCO fully open-source for Transition to Practice (TTP). We will work with two local software companies in Raleigh, namely Green Energy Corporation and Real-Time Innovations, Inc. to develop a scalable, secure middleware using Data-Distribution Service (DDS) technology. Thus, within the scope of the project, we also expect to enrich the state-of-the-art cloud computing and networking technologies with new control and management functions. From a technical perspective, FRESCO will answer three main research questions. First, can wide-area controllers be co-designed in sync with communication delays to make the closed-loop system resilient and delay-aware, rather than just delay-tolerant This is particularly important, as PMU data, in most practical scenarios, will have to be transported over a shared resource, sharing bandwidth with other ongoing applications, giving rise to not only transport delays, but also significant delays due to queuing and routing. Advanced ideas of arbitrated network control designs will be used to address this problem. The second question we address is for cost. Given that there are several participants in this wide-area control, how much is each participant willing to pay in sharing the network cost with others for the sake of supporting a system-wide control objective compared to its current practice of opting for selfish feedback control only Ideas from cooperative game theory will be used to investigate this problem. The final question addresses security how can one develop a scientific methodology to assess risks, and mitigate security attacks in wide-area control? Statistical and structural analysis of attack defense modes using Bayesian and Markov models, game theory, and discrete-event simulation will be used to address this issue. Experimental demos will be carried out using the DETER-WAMS network, showcasing the importance of cyber-innovation for the sustainability of energy infrastructures. Research results will be broadcast through journal publications, and jointly organized graduate courses between NCSU, MIT and USC.