Project Title: CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Towards Effective and Efficient Sensing-Motion
Co-Design of Swarming Cyber-Physical Systems
Partnering Institutions and Investigators:
Wichita State University: Pu Wang (PI), Zheng Chen (Co-PI) and Animesh Chakravarthy
(Co-PI) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Wencen Wu (PI)
State University of New York at Buffalo: Zhi Sun (PI)
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF), Award Number 1446557
Funding Division: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)
Funded Amount: $542,809 (WSU), $258,160 (RPI), $186,708 (SUNY-Buffalo)
Project Duration: January 1, 2015 – December 31, 2017.
Abstract: The project focuses on swarming cyber-physical systems (swarming CPS) consisting of a collection of mobile networked agents, each of which has sensing, computing, communication, and locomotion capabilities, and that have a wide range of civilian and military applications. Different from conventional static CPS, swarming CPS rely on mobile computing entities, e.g., robots, which collaboratively interact with phenomena of interest at different physical locations. This unique feature calls for novel sensing-motion co-design solutions to accomplish a variety of increasingly complex missions. Towards this, the overall research objective of this project is to establish and demonstrate a generic motion-sensing co-design procedure that will significantly reduce the complexity of the mission design for swarming CPS, and greatly facilitate the development of effective, efficient and adaptive control and sensing strategies under various environment uncertainties. This project aims to offer comprehensive scientific understanding of the dynamic nature of swarming CPS, contribute to generic engineering principles for designing collaborative control and sensing algorithms, and advance the enabling technologies of practically applying CPS in the challenging environment. The research solutions of this project aim to bring significant advance in the environmental sustainability, homeland security, and human well-being. The project provides unique interdisciplinary training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students through both research work and related courses that the PIs will develop and offer.