S&AS: INT: COLLAB: Aerodynamic Intelligent Morphing System (A-IMS) for Autonomous Smart Utility Truck Safety and Productivity in Severe Environments

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Utility trucks are the first responders in areas of extreme weather situations for tasks such as rescuing people from disaster areas, cutting trees to restore traffic, and repairing electric posts and restoring power. This study establishes a scientific framework for maintaining the productivity and safety of emergency response vehicles while eliminating accidents. This is implemented via a novel integrated framework to monitor and predict weather conditions and feed that information into intelligent mechanisms that autonomously shape the aerodynamic surfaces of utility trucks. The project includes recruitment efforts and activities to integrate high-school students, as well as students from multiple cultures, and disciplines into autonomy research. This project is expected to contribute new scientific knowledge and engineering techniques for next generation transportation infrastructure resiliency, and to facilitate economic growth in the state of Alabama.Unlike conventional approaches, the A-IMS will integrate model-free shape-morphing learning mechanisms with model-based interactive design to manage air-fluid flows, based on the road conditions, meteorology, speed limit, wind speed, and direction. This potentially transformative framework for A-IMS will: (1) bring new perspectives of learning to enhance the adaptability and intelligence in natural-engineering systems that leverage physical and information processes; (2) establish an integrated design framework for hazardous environments to achieve resilience, and productivity through integrated adaptation of morphological properties while also mitigating the effects of potentially adversarial learning agents that can exist in the cloud; (3) investigate the interactive physical components of the A-IMS, that will simultaneously operate in two different mediums of multi-phase fluids, and solids (i.e., the air/fluid and road). The A-IMS framework will be evaluated through hardware/software implementation, as well as in real-world conditions in the unique test conditions available at Wall of Wind at Florida International University. The project's education and outreach component include integrated research and education plans that will lead to technology transfer and summer camps with a special focus on reaching out to underrepresented minorities and women.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.