The objective of this research is to scale up the capabilities of fully autonomous vehicles so that they are capable of operating in mixed-traffic urban environments (e.g., in a city such as Columbus or even New York or Istanbul). Such environments are realistic large-city driving situations involving many other vehicles, mostly human-driven. Moreover, such a car will be in a world where it interacts with other cars, humans, other external effects, and internal and external software modules. This is a prototypical CPS with which we have considerable experience over many years, including participation in the recent DARPA Urban Challenge. Even in the latter case, though, operation to date has been restricted to relatively “clean” environments (such as multi-lane highways and simpler intersections with a few other vehicles). The approach is to integrate multidisciplinary advances in software, sensing and control, and modeling to address current weaknesses in autonomous vehicle design for this complex mixed-traffic urban environment. All work will be done within a defined design-and-verification cycle. Theoretical advances and new models will be evaluated both by large-scale simulations, and by implementation on laboratory robots and road-worthy vehicles driven in real-world situations. The research address significant improvements to current methods and tools to enable a number of formal methods to move from use in limited, controlled environments to use in more complex and realistic environments. The theory, tools, and design methods that are investigated have potential application for a broad class of cyber-physical systems consisting of mobile entities operating in a semi-structured environment. This research has the potential to lead to safer autonomous vehicles and to improve economic competitiveness, the nation's transportation infrastructure, and energy efficiency. The richness of the domain means that expected research contributions can apply not only to autonomous vehicles but, also, to a variety of related cyber-physical systems such as service robots in hospitals and rescue robots used after natural disasters. The experimental research laboratory for the project is used for undergraduate and graduate courses and supports new summer outreach projects for high-school students. Research outcomes are integrated with undergraduate and graduate courses on component-based software.

The objective of this research is the design of innovative routing, planning and coordination strategies for robot networks, and their application to oceanography. The approach is organized in three synergistic thrusts: (1) the application of queueing theory and combinatorial techniques to networked robots performing sequential tasks, (2) the design of novel distributed optimization and coordination schemes relying only on asynchronous and asymmetric communication, (3) the design of practical routing and coordination algorithms for the USC Networked Aquatic Platforms. In collaboration with oceanographers and marine biologists, the project aims to design motion, communication and interaction protocols that maximize the amount of scientific information collected by the platforms. This proposal addresses multi-dimensional problems of relevance in Engineering and Computer Science by unifying fundamental concepts from multiple cyberphysical domains (robotics, autonomy, combinatorics, and network science). Our team has expertise in a broad range of scientific disciplines, including control theory and theoretical computer science and their applications to multi-agent systems, robotics and sensor networks. The proposed research will have a positive impact on the emerging technology of autonomous and reliable robotic networks, performing a broad range of environmental monitoring and logistic tasks. Our educational and outreach objectives are manifold and focus on (1) integrating the proposed research themes into undergraduate education and research, e.g., via the existing NSF REU site at the USC Computer Science Department, and (2) mounting a vigorous program of outreach activities, e.g., via a well-developed collaboration with the UCSB Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships.

The objective of this research is to understand the loosely coupled networked control systems and to address the scientific and technological challenges that arise in their development and operation. The approach is to (1) develop a mathematical abstraction of the CPS, and an online actuation decision model that takes into account temporal and spatial dependencies among actions; (2) develop algorithms and policies to effectively manage the system and optimize its performance with respect to applications' QoS requirements; and (3) develop an agent-based event-driven framework to facilitate engineers easily monitor, (re)configure and control the system to achieve optimized results. The developed methodologies, algorithms, protocols and frameworks will be evaluated on testbeds and by our collaborating institution. The project provides fundamental understanding of loosely coupled networked control systems and a set of strategies in managing such systems. The components developed under this project enables the use of wireless-sensor-actuator networks for control systems found in a variety of disciplines and benefits waterway systems, air/ground transportation systems, power grid transmission systems, and the sort. The impact of this project is broadened through collaborations with our collaborating institution. This project provides a set of strategies and tools to help them meet the new standards. The inter-disciplinary labs and curriculum development at both undergraduate and graduate level with an emphasis on CPS interdisciplinary applications, theoretical foundations, and CPS implementations prepare our students as future workforce in the area of CPS applications.