I-Corps: iSpace Technology for Novel Traffic Light Managements

这个i-Corps项目建议进一步开发交通系统中的交通信号管理技术。自2002年以来，这项技术通过各种研究项目不断发展。提出的技术提供了一种解决方案，以满足大规模时间敏感型工业应用的控制和管理对效率、可扩展性、安全性和健壮性的要求。它建立在协作分布式控制技术的基础上，能够有效地解决环网中的时延、丢包和带宽分配等挑战。它可以有效地集成分布式传感器、分布式执行器、分布式控制器和通信网络，以便在物理和/或虚拟连接的空间中做出智能决策。这个空间可以小到一个房间或一栋建筑，也可以大到一个社区，甚至一座城市。与集中式控制相比，该技术不依赖于专门的控制中心，而是依赖于一组分布式的智能控制模块，这些模块通过与本地邻居交换信息来做出智能决策。这项技术是一种平台技术，可以满足许多工业应用的关键需求，例如：1)智能交通系统中的交通信号管理，2)建筑管理系统中的能源管理，3)市政停车场或社区环境中的电动汽车充电策略，4)聚合级别的移动设备电源管理。这项技术的进一步发展将对所有这些领域产生影响，并促进从集中控制向分布式控制的过渡趋势，这可能会带来相应的工业控制系统硬件和软件开发的重大进步。

This I-Corps project proposes to further develop a technology for traffic signal management in transportation systems. This technology has been evolving through various research projects since 2002. The proposed technology provides a solution to meet demands for efficiency, scalability, security and robustness in the control and management of large-scale time-sensitive industrial applications. It has been founded on cooperative distributed control technologies and is capable of addressing the network-in-the-loop challenges, such as time delay, packet loss and bandwidth allocation, efficiently. It can effectively integrate distributed sensors, distributed actuators, distributed controllers, and communication networks to make intelligent decisions over a physically and/or virtually connected space. This space can be as small as a room or a building, or can be as big as a community, or even a city. Compared to the centralized counterpart, the proposed technology does not rely on a specialized control center but a group of distributed smart control modules which make intelligent decisions by exchanging information with local neighbors. It scales well as the network grows with plug-and-play capabilities, exhibits resilience to the communication delays and robustness to node and link failures.This technology is a platform technology that meets the critical needs of many industrial applications, such as: 1) traffic signal management in intelligent transportation systems, 2) energy management in building management systems, 3) electric vehicle charging strategies in a municipal parking deck or a community environment, 4) mobile devices power management in an aggregate level. Further development of this technology will impact all of these areas and facilitate the transition trend from centralized control to distributed control, which may bring about significant advances in the corresponding hardware and software development for industrial control systems.