Systems where control loops are closed through a real-time network.
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.
Award Number
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Institution
University of Texas at Arlington
Lead PI
Yan Wan
Performance Period
-
Sponsor
National Science Foundation
Yan Wan Submitted by Yan Wan on October 3rd, 2017
Airborne networking utilizes direct flight-to-to-flight communication for flexible information sharing, safe maneuvering, and coordination of time-critical missions. It is challenging because of the high mobility, stringent safety requirements, and uncertain airspace environment. This project uses a co-design approach that exploits the mutual benefits of networking and decentralized mobility control in an uncertain heterogeneous environment.
Yan Wan Submitted by Yan Wan on October 31st, 2016
The goal of this project is to create an integrative framework for the design of coupled biological and robotic systems that accommodates system uncertainties and competing objectives in a rigorous, holistic, and effective manner. The design principles are developed using a concrete, end-to-end application of tracking and modeling fish movement with a network of gliding robotic fish.
Submitted by Xiaobo Tan on October 31st, 2016
Having a shared and accurate sense of time is critical to distributed Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Thanks to decades of research in clock technologies and synchronization protocols, it is now possible to measure and synchronize time across distributed systems with unprecedented accuracy. However, applications have not benefited to the same extent due to limitations of the system services that help manage time, and hardware-OS and
Submitted by Mani Srivastava on October 31st, 2016
It's common in controller design to assume that the controller reads the sensors and writes to the actuators at the same time instant. This assumption is often violated in practice because the controller executes its code sequentially on a microprocessor. If the microprocessor is "fast enough," often the controller will still work. However, if the sensing and control are done by two different devices that must communicate across a network, the resulting timing uncertainty due to network delays and clock offsets will often destabilize the controller.
Submitted by Joao Hespanha on October 31st, 2016
This project concerns real-time implementations of networked control strategies on distributed embedded systems.  Co-design of the implementation platform and control strategies for multiple control applications is addressed. Limited and shared resources among control and non-control applications introduce delays in transmitted messages. Various aspects of these delays are efficiently addressed in this research. Overrun strategies that accommodate variations in the delays have been developed.
Submitted by Anuradha Annaswamy on October 31st, 2016
This poster presents the Pulsar platform, which can achieve better than 5 nanosecond clock synchronization in an indoor environment combining wireless ultra-wideband communication with a chip-scale atomic clock. We discuss the various challenges in synchronization at nanosecond scales then propose and evaluate a proof-of-concept protocol for the same.
Submitted by Anthony Rowe on October 31st, 2016
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced up to $30 million in funding for two new programs that aim to solve some of the nation’s most pressing energy challenges by accelerating the development of novel energy technologies. NEXT-Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Automated on-Road vehicles (NEXTCAR) seeks to develop new technologies that decrease energy consumption of future vehicles through the use of connectivity and automation.
Submitted by Michael Kane on May 11th, 2016
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