NSF-AoF: FET: Small: Ubiquitous in-sensor computing for adaptive intelligent systems

具有内置存储和计算功能的微型传感器系统是边缘人工智能的基石。然而，在目前部署的系统中，感知和计算发生在不同的物理位置，导致大量数据在传感器模块和云计算平台之间穿梭。这在能源效率、延迟和处理传感器数据的能力方面是不可持续的，因此在物联网(IoT)时代连接了数十亿个传感器的情况下会对环境产生负面影响。拟议的项目旨在超越最先进的水平，将传感、存储器和计算功能集成到一个芯片中，以低能源预算和低延迟实现无处不在的应用。此外，在柔性衬底上建立这样的系统将使人们能够负担得起、可生物降解的智能可穿戴电子设备能够持续和自适应地监测人类健康。拟议的教育和外展活动将促进STEM职业生涯，鼓励工程教育和研究的多样性，并对确保美国和欧洲合作伙伴(芬兰)未来的繁荣产生重大影响。这项拟议的研究旨在提供智能和节能的可穿戴电子产品，这些电子产品将在物联网时代变得无处不在。实现这一目标的具体目标如下：1)设计和制造用于柔性传感器的新兴材料和器件；2)将铁电传感器和忆阻器交叉开关阵列集成到具有嵌入式安全功能的灵活近传感器计算系统中；以及3)展示传感器内计算平台，其中新兴设备将用作传感和非易失性存储元件，用于像素内智能图像处理。这项拟议的研究将使下一代智能和灵活的可穿戴电子设备能够在现场处理获取的信息。通过将传感器模块与计算引擎集成，新兴的硬件技术将大幅提高功率效率和计算吞吐量。该奖项反映了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。

Miniaturized sensor systems with built-in memory and computing functionalities are the cornerstones of artificial intelligence at the edge. However, in currently deployed systems, sensing and computing occur in separate physical locations, imposing massive data shuttling between the sensor module and the cloud-computing platform. This is unsustainable in terms of energy efficiency, latency, and capacity to process sensor data, and hence has a negative environmental impact with billions of sensors connected in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT). The proposed project intends to go beyond state-of-the-art by system-level integration of sensing, memory, and computing functionalities into one chip, allowing for ubiquitous applications at low energy budget and low latency. Furthermore, building such systems on flexible substrates will enable affordable and biodegradable smart-wearables electronics capable of monitoring human health continuously and adaptively. The proposed educational and outreach activities will promote STEM careers, encourage diversity in engineering education and research, and significantly impact securing the future prosperity of the U.S. and the European collaborative partner (Finland). The proposed research aims at delivering intelligent and energy-efficient wearable electronics that will become ubiquitous in the era of IoT. The specific objectives towards this goal are as follows: 1) to design and fabricate emerging materials and devices for flexible sensors; 2) to integrate ferroelectric sensors and memristor crossbar arrays into a flexible near-sensor computing system with embedded security functionality; and 3) to demonstrate an in-sensor computing platform where emerging devices will be used as both sensing and non-volatile memory elements for in-pixel intelligent processing of images. The proposed research will enable the next-generation smart and flexible wearable electronics to process the acquired information onsite. By integrating the sensor module with the computing engine, the emerging hardware technologies will substantially improve power efficiency and computing throughput.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.