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

我国重要基础设施的重要部分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、材料和集装箱处理、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。这些系统在北美拥有超过1万亿美元的安装基础，2008年预计收入超过900亿美元，代表了嵌入式实时系统的重要类别。然而，在现有的自动化系统中存在严重的设计和操作问题。僵化的架构和专有/不灵活的实现导致系统难以操作和维护。该项目解决了将网络嵌入式计算的进步融入具有灵活拓扑结构的自动化系统的关键研究问题。 对原子和协调动作的技术支持使复杂的耦合自动化系统能够进行协作操作。 传感器-执行器系统的实时中间件框架正在开发中，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，用于各种应用，如汽车装配线，化学加工行业，仓库，机场行李转盘，游乐园游乐设施和包裹配送中心。通过专注于自动化系统的特定领域，该项目旨在推动几项创新，包括：在低成本节点中传感器和致动器的有针对性的集成，由异常条件驱动的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，专门的算法和通信协议，解决了现实生活中的自动化要求，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.