ANVIL: A National Virtual Laboratory

该奖项为探索性研究小额赠款模式，为机器人研究中的国家虚拟实验室（NVL）的初步探索提供种子资金。该实验室将利用新兴的国家信息基础设施，连接全国各地的研究设施，设计机器人联合实验。这些将是地理上分布的实验，在不同的地点使用不同的代理，这样感知/行动模块将与当地环境进行物理交互，但将通过网络通信以协调它们完成共同任务。最初，NVL将开发一个基础设施，用于在地理分布的大学和工业研究实验室之间共享资源。该基础设施将包括视频、语音和数据链路的通信能力，提供高质量的实时交换和远程操作能力。这将使研究人员能够在不同的环境条件下共享和测试他们所有的软硬件资源。

This award, in the Small Grants for Exploratory Research mode, provides seed funding for initial exploration of a national virtual laboratory (NVL) in robotics research. The Laboratory will take advantage of the emerging National Information Infrastructure by connecting research facilities across the country to design joint experiments in robotics. These will be geographically distributed experiments, using different agents at separate sites, such that perception/action modules will interact physically with their local environments, but will communicate over the network to coordinate their accomplishment of a common task. Initially the NVL will develop an infrastructure for sharing resources among geographically distributed university and industry research laboratories. This infrastructure will consist of communication capabilities for video, voice and data links offering high-quality real-time excange and remote operation capabilities. This will enable the researchers to share and test all their software and hardware resources under diverse environmental conditions.