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

我国关键基础设施的重要组成部分依赖于自动化系统，这些系统在严格的安全和时间限制下运行。关键基础设施安全、装瓶和包装、材料和集装箱搬运、自动化制造、船载系统、移动系统、机场行李搬运和游乐园游乐设施都是此类系统的几个例子。这些系统在北美拥有超过1万亿美元的装机量，预计2008年的收入将超过900亿美元，是嵌入式实时系统的重要类别。然而，现有的自动化系统存在严重的设计和操作问题。僵化的体系结构和专有/僵化的实现导致系统难以操作和维护。该项目解决的研究问题对于将网络嵌入式计算的进步融入到具有灵活拓扑的自动化系统中至关重要。对原子和协调动作的技术支持使复杂、耦合的自动化系统能够实现协作操作。一个用于传感器-执行器系统的实时中间件框架正在开发中，它为节点级执行、调度、同步、模式管理和故障管理提供服务。通过整合这些先进技术，可以降低成本、实现精细控制、提高安全性，并为汽车装配线、化工流程工业、仓库、机场行李传送带、游乐园游乐设施和包裹配送中心等各种应用设计具有灵活拓扑的自动化系统。通过专注于自动化系统的特定领域，该项目寻求推动几项创新，包括：在低成本节点中有针对性地集成传感器和执行器，由异常条件驱动的无线传感器网络的动态可重新配置，利用冗余来屏蔽单个节点或传感器故障，可扩展的基础设施，监控大规模操作，在受限条件下的性能，满足现实生活中自动化要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.