Collaborative Research: CCRI: New: Nation-wide Community-based Mobile Edge Sensing and Computing Testbeds

移动的传感设备和移动的计算技术的发展为移动的边缘传感和计算带来了新的研究机遇，包括活动识别、健康监测、用户身份验证、人体动态跟踪等。然而，移动的边缘传感和计算的研究受到劳动密集型培训、不现实的实验环境、实际场景中严重的环境干扰的影响。此外，不同的研究小组通常单独进行小规模的实验，这使得同一社区的小组之间难以共享研究成果和数据。美国移动的边缘传感和计算社区需要一个实验性基础设施，以在全国范围内共享数据/模型，并执行实用和可重复的实验。该项目的目标是建立一个大规模的、移动的边缘传感和计算基础设施，以提供实用的实验环境、丰富的用户工具和服务以及数据/模型共享。基于拟议的基础设施，各个研究小组可以连接起来，以低成本进行大规模研究。许多跨学科社区也可以聚集在一起，通过拟议的基础设施进行研究，包括基于深度学习的硬件设计，智能医疗保健，AR/VR，人流监测，智能家居和智能城市。研究成果可以使跨学科的大学生/研究生和少数民族学生受益，为他们提供新的研究课题和任务。拟议的研究基础设施包括三个有机连接的功能，以提供可重复的实验环境，促进数据/模型共享，并在全国范围内加入独立的研究小组。特别是，该项目开发了移动的传感功能，以支持在移动的边缘设备上进行低工作量大规模传感数据收集、机器人实验和隐私保护学习的引人注目的研究。此外，该项目还开发了一种边缘计算功能，将远程操作的移动的边缘设备和移动的开发工具包集成在一起，以支持低成本移动的设备的软硬件协同设计和设备上AI学习的研究。此外，开发了一种新的数据和模型共享功能，以支持广泛的移动的边缘传感和计算研究领域。提供了一个统一的门户网站，使用户能够远程使用这些功能。拟议的基础设施提供了一个必要的硬件和软件基础，使CISE研究重点的前沿研究，包括移动的边缘传感，硬件和软件协同设计，以及分布式计算与共享的大规模数据从实际环境。该项目的成果，包括独特的集成功能，强大的工具和服务，以及全面的数据集，进一步加强了全国学术界，工业界和政府的许多研究小组的研究合作。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和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The advancement of mobile sensing devices and mobile computing technologies have triggered new research opportunities in mobile edge sensing and computing, including activity recognition, wellbeing monitoring, user authentication, human dynamics tracking, etc. However, research in mobile edge sensing and computing suffers from labor-intensive training, unrealistic experimental environments, heavy environmental interferences in practical scenarios. In addition, different research groups usually conduct small-scale experiments separately, which makes it difficult to share the research results and data among groups in the same community. The U.S. mobile edge sensing and computing community demands an experimental infrastructure to share data/models nationwide and perform practical and repeatable experiments. The goal of this project is to build a large-scale, mobile edge sensing and computing infrastructure to provide practical experimental environments, rich user tools and services, and data/model sharing. Based on the proposed infrastructure, individual research groups can be connected to conduct large-scale research with low efforts. Many interdisciplinary communities can also be brought together, conducting research via the proposed infrastructure, including deep learning-based hardware design, smart healthcare, AR/VR, human flow monitoring, smart home, and smart city. The research results can benefit interdisciplinary curriculums with new research topics and tasks for undergraduate/graduate and minority students.The proposed research infrastructure includes three organically connected functionalities to provide repeatable experimental environments, facilitate data/model-sharing, and join separated research groups on a national scale. In particular, this project develops mobile sensing functionalities for supporting compelling research in low-effort large-scale sensing data collection, robot-enabled experimenting, and privacy-preserved learning on mobile edge devices. Furthermore, this project develops an edge computing functionality integrating remote-operated mobile edge devices and mobile development kits to support research in software and hardware co-design and on-device AI learning for low-cost mobile devices. In addition, a novel data and model sharing functionality is developed to support a broad spectrum of mobile edge sensing and computing research areas. A uniform web portal is provided to allow users to use these functionalities remotely. The proposed infrastructure provides an essential hardware and software foundation that enables cutting-edge research in CISE research focuses, including mobile edge sensing, hardware and software co-design, and distributed computing with sharable large-scale data from practical environments. The outcome from this project, including the unique integrated functionalities, powerful tools and services, and comprehensive datasets, further enhances the research collaboration of many research groups in academia, industry, and government across the nation.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.