Collaborative Research: CSR-EHS: Real-time Sensor-Actuator Systems for Automation

我们国家重要的基础设施依赖于在严格的安全和时间限制下运行的自动化系统。关键基础设施安全、装瓶和包装、材料和容器处理、自动化制造、船上系统、运动系统、机场行李处理和游乐园游乐设施是此类系统的几个例子。这些系统代表了嵌入式实时系统的一个重要类别，在北美的安装基数超过一万亿美元，预计2008年的收入将超过900亿美元。然而，现有的自动化系统存在着严重的设计和操作问题。僵化的体系结构和专有/不灵活的实现导致了难以操作和维护的系统。该项目解决的研究问题对于将网络嵌入式计算的进展纳入具有灵活拓扑结构的自动化系统至关重要。对原子和协调行动的技术支持使复杂的、耦合的自动化系统中的协作操作成为可能。正在开发用于传感器-执行器系统的实时中间件框架，为节点级执行、调度、同步、模式管理和故障管理提供服务。通过整合这些进步，可以降低成本，实现细粒度控制，提高安全性，并设计具有灵活拓扑结构的自动化系统，适用于各种应用，如汽车装配线，化学加工工业，仓库，机场行李传送带，游乐园游乐设施和包裹配送中心。通过关注自动化系统的特定领域，该项目寻求推动一些创新，包括：在低成本节点中有针对性地集成传感器和执行器，在异常条件下驱动无线传感器网络的动态可重新配置性，利用冗余来掩盖单个节点或传感器故障，可扩展的基础设施，大规模操作的监控，约束条件下的性能，解决现实生活自动化需求的专用算法和通信协议，以及与当前自动化系统的互操作性。

Significant pieces of our nation's critical infrastructures depend on automation systems that operate under tight safety and timing constraints. Critical infrastructure security, bottling and packaging, material and container handling, automated manufacturing, on-board ship systems, locomotion systems, airport baggage handling, and amusement park rides are a few examples of such systems. With over a trillion dollars of installed base in North America, and over $90 Billion dollars forecasted revenues for year 2008, these systems represent an important class of embedded real-time systems. However, there are serious design and operational problems in existing automation systems. Rigid architectures and proprietary/inflexible implementations have resulted in systems that are difficult to operate and maintain. This project addresses research issues that are critical for incorporating advances in networked embedded computing into automation systems with flexible topologies. Technology support for atomic and coordinated actions enables cooperative operation in complex, coupled automation systems. A real-time middleware framework for sensor-actuator systems is being developed, providing services for node-level execution, scheduling, synchronization, mode-management, and fault management. By incorporating these advances, it is possible to reduce costs, achieve fine-grained control, improve safety, and design automation systems with flexible topologies for a variety of applications such as automotive assembly lines, chemical process industries, warehouses, airport baggage carousels, amusement park rides and package distribution centers. By focusing on the specific domain of automation systems, this project seeks to drive several innovations that include: targeted integration of sensors and actuators in low-cost nodes, dynamic re-configurability of wireless sensor networks driven by exception conditions, exploitation of redundancy to mask individual node or sensor failures, a scalable infrastructure, monitoring of large-scale operations, performance under constrained conditions, specialized algorithms and communication protocols that address real-life automation requirements, and inter-operability with current automation systems.