CAREER: Enabling Dynamic, Adaptive, and Reliable Battery-free Embedded Computing

几十年来，嵌入式计算和传感系统主要依赖电池供电。然而，电池体积庞大，价格昂贵，维护费用高，并且对于下一万亿台设备来说是不可持续的。一种新兴的计算设备不再依赖于电池中存储的能量，而是从太阳、运动、无线电波和振动等来源获取操作所需的所有能量。然而，在这些无电池系统上构建复杂的应用程序是具有挑战性的，因为能量收集的波动会导致频繁的电源故障。程序员必须弄清楚如何将执行的片段串在一起以满足应用程序的目标，同时处理由电源故障引起的新的软件和硬件错误。正因为如此，内存密集型、推理繁重型和面向用户的应用程序很少在无电池设备上实现。构建这些应用程序需要具有加速器和异构计算模块的新通用硬件平台。然而，硬件是不够的。新硬件带来了新的挑战，如可扩展性、动态性和内存高效检查点。该项目探索间歇性计算系统和工具链支持，用于集成各种计算模块，如FPGA，加速器和矢量处理器以及传统的微控制器。该项目在间歇性计算系统堆栈中编织可扩展性，利用这些新模块在这一重要的新型计算设备上实现反应式、自适应和高性能应用程序。该项目将探索和原型化可扩展的硬件平台，自适应软件系统，高级编程语言和能源内省工具，使即使是新手开发人员也能快速原型化复杂的无电池应用程序，即使停电。这些进步将在移动的健康、栖息地监测和交互设备的实际部署中得到展示和评估。无电池嵌入式系统为构建下一万亿计算设备提供了一种变革性和生态可持续的方法。该项目填补了系统设计人员的空白，他们缺乏硬件平台，高效的运行时系统和专注的工具，无法使用这些设备构建功能强大，数据密集，反应性和可靠的应用程序。这项研究的结果将影响科学和工业利益领域：包括医疗保健（可穿戴和身体传感器网络），生态学，园艺，基础设施，保护和公用事业监测，以及许多其他长期，大规模传感至关重要的领域。硬件、系统和工具将加速智能城市和物联网等关键领域的研究和商业化。该项目的示范应用，包括智能健康设备、交互式设备和以新手为中心的编程环境，将为鼓励采用无电池设备提供方法证明。该项目包括外展和教育举措，重点是通过与一所为公立学校和非公立学校服务的夏威夷土著人合作，建立可持续和注重保护的嵌入式系统应用程序，引入计算概念，增加夏威夷土著青年对计算的参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，更广泛的影响审查标准。

For decades, embedded computing and sensing systems have relied primarily on battery power. Yet, batteries are bulky, expensive, high-maintenance, and not sustainable for the next trillion devices. Instead of relying on energy stored in a battery, an emerging class of computing devices harvests all energy needed for operation from sources such as the sun, motion, radio waves, and vibration. However, building sophisticated applications on these battery-free systems is challenging due to frequent power failures from fluctuations in energy harvesting. Programmers must figure out how to string together fragments of execution to meet application goals while dealing with novel software and hardware bugs that stem from power failures. Because of this, memory-intensive, inference-heavy, and user-facing applications have rarely materialized on battery-free devices. New general-purpose hardware platforms with accelerators and heterogeneous computing modules are needed to build these applications. However, hardware is not enough. With new hardware comes new challenges like scalability, dynamism, and memory-efficient checkpointing. This project explores intermittent computing systems and toolchain support for integrating diverse computing modules, like FPGAs, Accelerators, and Vector Processors, alongside traditional microcontrollers. The project weaves scalability across the intermittent computing system stack, leveraging these new modules to enable reactive, adaptive, and high-performance applications on this important new class of computing devices. This project will explore and prototype scalable hardware platforms, adaptive software systems, high-level programming languages, and energy introspection tools that enable even novice developers to quickly prototype sophisticated battery-free applications, despite power failures. These advancements will be demonstrated and evaluated in the context of real-world deployments in mobile health, habitat monitoring, and interactive devices.Battery-free embedded systems offer a transformative and ecologically sustainable approach for building the next trillion computing devices. This project fills a gap for system designers who lack the hardware platforms, efficient runtime systems, and focused tools to build capable, data-intensive, reactive, and reliable applications with these devices. The results of this research will impact fields across scientific and industrial interests: including healthcare (wearable and body sensor networks), ecology, horticulture, infrastructure, conservation, and public utility monitoring, and many other areas where long-term, massive scale sensing is essential. The hardware, systems, and tools will speed up research and commercialization in critical sectors like smart cities and the Internet of Things. The project's demonstration applications, including smart health devices, interactive devices, and novice-focused programming environments, will provide proof of approach to encourage uptake of battery-free devices. The project includes outreach and education initiatives focused on increasing participation among Native Hawaiian youth in computing by introducing computing concepts via building sustainable and conservation-focused embedded systems applications in partnership with a Native Hawaiian serving public school and non-profit organizations.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.