Abstract: Motivation: Energy infrastructure is a critical underpinning of modern society. To ensure its reliable operation, a nation-­‐wide or continent-­‐wide situational awareness system is essential to provide high-­‐resolution understanding of the system dynamics such that proper actions can be taken in real-­‐time in response to power system disturbances and to avoid cascading blackouts. The power grid represents a typical highly dynamic cyber-­‐physical system (CPS).

Abstract: Our overarching goal is to develop a framework for design automation of cyber‐physical systems that augment human‐in‐the‐loop inference and interaction by complex systems operating at the interface of computation and physical environment.

Abstract: Control networks are wireless substrates for industrial automation control, such as the WirelessHART and ISA100.11.a, and have fundamental differences over their sensor network counterparts as they also include actuation and the physical dynamics. Consequently, these system are fundamentally constrained by the tight coupling, and closed-loop control and actuation of physical processes.

Abstract: Fault tolerance is vital to ensuring the integrity and availability of safety critical systems. Current solutions are based almost exclusively on physical redundancy at all levels of the design. The use of physical redundancy, however, dramatically increases system size, complexity, weight, and power consumption.

Abstract: The purpose of this grant was to develop clothing-like material with embedded sensors and synthetic muscles. When eventually worn by brain-injured individuals over one or more limbs, this clothing may be used to restore their capability for independent mobility. The material, called a “second skin”, is a cyberphysical system designed as a soft robot that cooperates with the biological muscles of the body.

Abstract: Today, the assembly of safety-critical software involves many distinct agents, including control engineers and software engineers. Due in part to the existing regulatory framework, little, if any, semantic information is passed from control engineers (who specify the real-time software) to software engineers (who implement the specifications). As a result, high-level, system-wide information is lost at the time of software assembly, and only during system validation do software specification and semantics re-appear.

Abstract: Processors in cyber‐physical systems are increasingly being used in applications where they must operate in harsh ambient conditions and a computational workload which can lead to high chip temperatures. Examples include cars, robots, aircraft and spacecraft. High operating temperatures accelerate the aging of the chips, thus increasing transient and permanent failure rates. Current ways to deal with this mostly turn off the processor core or drastically slow it down when some part of it is seen to exceed a given temperature threshold.

Abstract: The objective of this research is to define programming abstractions and theories of computation with temporal semantics for distributed cyber-­‐physical systems. The approach is to create a coordination language for distributed embedded software that blends naturally with models of physical dynamics and to study the semantics of such a coordination language. The coordination language is a visual modeling language that is based on a rigorous discrete-­‐event concurrent model of computation.

Abstract: The SDB project seeks to design, engineer, and evaluate the foundational information substrate for cyberphysical systems in a concrete, canonical form -  creation  of  efficient,  agile,  model- driven, human-centered building systems. Modern commercial buildings provide increasingly integrated Building Management Systems, but are typically closed or based on proprietary interfaces, are difficult to extend, and it is expensive to add new capabilities.

Abstract: The objective of this research is to develop a theory of “ActionWebs”, that is, networked embedded sensor-rich systems, which can be tasked to coordinate multiple decision- makers. The approach is to first identify models of ActionWebs using stochastic hybrid systems, an interlinking of continuous dynamical physical models with discrete state representations of interconnection and computation. Second, algorithms will be designed for tasking individual sensors, based on information objectives for the entire system.