This project aims to achieve key technology, infrastructure, and regulatory science advances for next generation medical systems based on the concept of medical application platforms (MAPs). A MAP is a safety/security-critical real-time computing platform for: (a) integrating heterogeneous devices and medical IT systems, (b) hosting application programs ("apps") that provide medical utility through the ability to both acquire information and update/control integrated devices, IT systems, and displays. The project will develop formal architectural and behavioral specification languages for defining MAPs, with a focus on techniques that enable compositional reasoning about MAP component interoperability and safety. These formal languages will include an extensible property language to enable the specification of real-time, quality-of-service, and attributes specific to medical contexts that can be leveraged by code generation, testing, and verification tools. The project will work closely with a synergistic team of clinicians, device industry partners, regulators, and medical device interoperability and safety standard organizations to develop an open source MAP innovation platform to enable key stakeholders within the nation's health care ecosphere to identify, prototype, and evaluate solutions to key technology and regulatory challenges that must be overcome to develop a commodity market of regulated MAP components. Because MAPs provide pre-built certified infrastructure and building blocks for rapidly developing multi-device medical applications, this research has the potential to usher in a new paradigm of medical system that significantly increases the pace of innovation, lowers development costs, enables new functionality by aggregating multiple devices into a system of systems, and achieves greater system safety.

Multicore platforms have the potential of revolutionizing the capabilities of embedded cyber-physical systems. Unfortunately, when such systems have safety-critical components, multicore platforms are rarely used. The reason is a lack of predictability associated with hardware components such as caches, memory controllers, etc., that are shared among cores. With current technology, very conservative estimates concerning the usage of these shared resources must be made, to certify that overuse violations do not occur at runtime. The resulting over-provisioning can be significant, easily negating the processing power of any additional cores. The goal of this project is to resolve this multicore "predictability problem" by developing allocation mechanisms that enable shared hardware resources to be controlled in a predictable way. The research agenda in this project includes fundamental research on relevant real-time resource allocation problems, prototyping efforts involving real-time operating systems and middleware, and experimental evaluations of improvements enabled by the developed mechanisms in timing analysis tools (which are used to determine task execution-time budgets). Addressing the "predictability problem" associated with multicore platforms would be a breakthrough result for safety-critical, cyber-physical systems in domains such as avionics and automobiles. When using multicore platforms to host highly-critical workloads in these domains, the current state of the art is to obviate the predictability problem by turning off all but one core. Unless a more intelligent solution can be found, such domains will not benefit from savings in size, weight, and power (SWaP) and gains in functionality that multicore platforms afford. Broader impacts include joint research with industry colleagues on supporting real-time workloads in unmanned air vehicles, the development of publicly-available open-source software that can be used by other institutions for research and teaching purposes, and the development of a new course on cyber-physical systems.

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.

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.

Multicore platforms have the potential of revolutionizing the capabilities of embedded cyber-physical systems. Unfortunately, when such systems have safety-critical components, multicore platforms are rarely used. The reason is a lack of predictability associated with hardware components such as caches, memory controllers, etc., that are shared among cores. With current technology, very conservative estimates concerning the usage of these shared resources must be made, to certify that overuse violations do not occur at runtime. The resulting over-provisioning can be significant, easily negating the processing power of any additional cores. The goal of this project is to resolve this multicore "predictability problem" by developing allocation mechanisms that enable shared hardware resources to be controlled in a predictable way. The research agenda in this project includes fundamental research on relevant real-time resource allocation problems, prototyping efforts involving real-time operating systems and middleware, and experimental evaluations of improvements enabled by the developed mechanisms in timing analysis tools (which are used to determine task execution-time budgets). Addressing the "predictability problem" associated with multicore platforms would be a breakthrough result for safety-critical, cyber-physical systems in domains such as avionics and automobiles. When using multicore platforms to host highly-critical workloads in these domains, the current state of the art is to obviate the predictability problem by turning off all but one core. Unless a more intelligent solution can be found, such domains will not benefit from savings in size, weight, and power (SWaP) and gains in functionality that multicore platforms afford. Broader impacts include joint research with industry colleagues on supporting real-time workloads in unmanned air vehicles, the development of publicly-available open-source software that can be used by other institutions for research and teaching purposes, and the development of a new course on cyber-physical systems.

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.

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. Continued on award #1562236: http://cps-vo.org/node/24060

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.

Continuous real-time tracking of the eye and field-of-view of an individual is profoundly important to understanding how humans perceive and interact with the physical world. This work advances both the technology and engineering of cyber-physical systems by designing an innovative paradigm involving next-generation computational eyeglasses that interact with a user's mobile phone to provide the capability for real-time visual context sensing and inference. This research integrates novel research into low-power embedded systems, image representation, image processing and machine learning, and mobile sensing and inference, to advance the state-of-art in continuous sensing for CPS applications. The activity addresses several fundamental research challenges including: 1) design of novel, highly integrated, computational eyeglasses for tracking eye movements, the visual field of a user, and head movement patterns, all in real-time; 2) a unified compressive signal processing framework that optimizes sensing and estimation, while enabling re-targeting of the device to perform a broad range of tasks depending on the needs of an application; 3) design of a novel real-time visual context sensing system that extracts high-level contexts of interest from compressed data representations; and 4) a layer of intelligence that combines contexts extracted from the computational eyeglass together with contexts obtained from the mobile phone to improve energy-efficiency and sensing accuracy. This technology can revolutionize a range of disciplines including transportation, healthcare, behavioral science and market research. Continuous monitoring of the eye and field-of-view of an individual can enable detection of hazardous behaviors such as drowsiness while driving, mental health issues such as schizophrenia, addictive behavior and substance abuse, neurological disease progression, head injuries, and others. The research provides the foundations for such applications through the design of a prototype platform together with real-time sensor processing algorithms, and making these systems available through open source venues for broader use. Outreach for this project includes demonstrations of the device at science fairs for high-school students, and integration of the platform into undergraduate and graduate courses.