CPS: Small: Fundamental Advances in Control of Wireless Sensor and Robotic Networks

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。该项目的目标是调查无线传感器和机器人网络的网络控制和分布式协调方面的基本问题。对这些网络物理系统的研究非常重要，因为它们在几个应用领域都有广泛的适用性，包括环境监测、搜索和救援以及医疗保健。该方法是利用这类系统的固有特性来确保稳定性、高性能、可扩展性和模块化，而不考虑有害的网络效应。就智力方面的优点而言，所提出的努力有可能导致对网络物理系统中延迟不稳定和时空同步机制的理解的变革性改变。预计这种理解将有助于解决无线传感器和机器人网络中的延迟不稳定、同步和协调问题，而不会牺牲系统的性能、可扩展性或模块化。具体的预期成果包括一个为具有输入/输出通信延迟的机器人系统设计控制算法的框架，一个用于解决介质访问延迟和数据丢失的通信管理模块，一个用于机器人系统之间实时协调的同步算法，以及一个确保时钟同步的方案。就更广泛的影响而言，该项目可能会影响在几个领域非常重要的无线传感器和执行器网络的广泛领域。一名研究生和一名本科生直接从这项研究中受益，预计几名本科生和研究生将从马里兰大学丰富的课程中受益。通过马里兰大学的尊重计划，来自代表性不足群体的高中生被包括在研究工作中。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The objective of this project is to investigate fundamental issues in network control and distributed coordination of wireless sensor and robotic networks. The study of these cyber-physical systems is important as they find wide applicability in several applications areas including environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and health care. The approach is to exploit intrinsic properties of such systems to ensure stability, high performance, scalability and modularity despite the deleterious network effects.With respect to intellectual merit, the proposed effort has the potential to lead to a transformational change in the understanding of the mechanisms for delay instability and spatio-temporal synchronization in cyber-physical systems. It is expected that this understanding will help in solving the delay-instability, synchronization, and coordination problems in wireless sensor and robotic networks without sacrificing the performance, scalability, or modularity of the system. Specific expected outcomes include a framework for designing control algorithms for robotic systems with input/output communication delays, a communication management module for addressing medium access delays and data losses, synchronization algorithms for real-time coordination between robotic systems, and a scheme for ensuring clock synchronization.With respect to broader impacts, the project has the potential to impact the broad area of wireless sensor and actuator networks that are important in several domains. One graduate student and an undergraduate student directly benefit from the research and it is expected that several undergraduate and graduate students will benefit from the enriched curricula at University of Maryland. High school students from underrepresented groups are included in the research effort through the University of Maryland's ESTEEM program.