Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Advanced Streetscape Sensing, Communications and Computing (ASTRSCC)

工程研究中心规划奖助金竞赛是作为ERC计划的试点征集活动进行的。规划拨款不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是旨在建立团队之间的能力，以规划汇聚的、中心规模的工程研究。通过ERC规划拨款将探索的基本问题是，未来一代无线网络与尖端计算相结合，如何改善街道层面(街景)的当地社区的生活和景观，在那里，工程解决方案可以直接影响个人。在街景中追求科学是具有挑战性的：它将我们的科学理解与人类行动和互动的混乱复杂性对立起来，在空间、时间和影响的尺度上，往往超过了我们提供支持数据和分析的实验能力。本ERC将研究如何在喧嚣中发展对当地街道景观需求和体验的深刻理解。然后，这些信息将被用来确定如何将这种理解快速应用于大规模智能城市基础设施。可以利用基础设施方面的改进，以当地定义的专用性向不同用户返回本地规模的服务。最初的规划资助活动将集中在一个新授予的NSF高级无线研究平台(PAWR)试验床上，名为？COSMOS？(云增强开放软件定义？城市规模部署的移动无线测试床)在西哈莱姆区(纽约市)1平方英里的区域内。Cosmos研究了如何填补沿街智能城市服务的关键空白，在街道景观中，个人以一种往往令人惊讶的方式体验技术和城市环境，而这些方式超出了当前一代智能城市技术的覆盖范围。利用规划拨款，该团队将把覆盖范围从哈莱姆试验台扩展到其他城市和农村地区。这项ERC规划工作将探索未来一代无线网络与尖端计算相结合，如何改善街道层面的当地社区的生活和景观。它将在五个应用主题领域集中讨论非常局部规模的智能城市功能：零售业的未来，特别是无收银员零售；道路安全，主要侧重于车辆、街道、十字路口和儿童和老年人的横穿行为之间的界面；公共空间的道德安全，特别是远程监测街道和敏感设施周围的个人和人群流量的好处和隐私陷阱；最后一米物流，特别是现有的送货和装载物流与即将到来的街头自主物流之间的临时动态；以及户外工作的未来，特别是城市工作人员，如警察和紧急服务提供者，以及交通管制、维护和施工人员、公用事业公司和卫生设施提供者在街道上和周围进行的工作。对于已经确定的五个主题领域而言，在当地范围内为个人提供高度互动的实时应用程序的潜力是深远的。通过计划中的社区参与，很可能会确定同等或更重要的主题应用领域。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.The fundamental question to be explored through this ERC planning grant is how future generation wireless networks, combined with cutting-edge computing, may improve the life and landscape of local communities at the street level (streetscape), where engineering solutions can impact individuals directly. Pursuing science at the streetscape is challenging: it pits our scientific understanding against the messy complexity of human action and interaction, at scales of space, time, and impact that often outstrip our experimental ability to provide supporting data and analysis. This ERC will examine how to develop a deep understanding of the local streetscape needs and experiences amid all of the hustle and bustle that implies. This information will then be used to identify how that understanding can be quickly applied to large-scale smart city infrastructure. Improvements in infrastructure can be leveraged to return services at local scale to different users with locality-defined specificity. The initial planning grant activities will focus on a newly awarded NSF Platform for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) testbed entitled ?COSMOS? (Cloud-Enhanced Open Software-Defined ?Mobile Wireless Testbed for City-Scale Deployment) in an area of 1 sq mile in West Harlem (New York City). COSMOS examines how to fill-in critical gaps in smart city services along the streetscape, where individual people experience technology and the urban environment in often surprising ways that fall beyond the reach of current-generation smart city technology. Using the planning grant, the team will expand that reach beyond the Harlem testbed to other cities, as well as to rural settings.This ERC planning efforts will explore how future generation wireless networks, combined with cutting-edge computing, may improve the life and landscape of local communities at the street level. It will focus on smart city functionality at very local scales in five applied thematic areas: The future of retailing, particularly cashier-less retail; Road safety, focused primarily at the interface between vehicles, streets, intersections, and crossing behavior of children and the elderly; Ethical security in public spaces, particularly benefits and privacy pitfalls of remote monitoring of individual and crowd flow on streets and around sensitive facilities; Last-meter logistics, especially interim dynamics between existing delivery and loading logistics and forthcoming autonomous logistics at the street-side; and The future of outdoor work, especially work performed on and around streets by city workers such as police and emergency service providers, as well as traffic control, maintenance and construction crews, utilities, and sanitation providers. The potential for highly interactive real-time applications for individuals at the very local scale is profound for the five thematic areas already identified. It is very likely that through the planned community engagement, equally or more important thematic application areas will be identified.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.