CPS: Breakthrough: Programming and Execution Environment for Geo-Distributed Latency-Sensitive Applications

Abstract: The confluence of new networked sensing technologies (e.g., cameras), distributed computational resources (e.g., cloud computing), and algorithmic advances (e.g., computer vision) are offering new and exciting opportunities for solving a variety of new problems that are of societal importance including emergency response, disaster recovery, surveillance, and transportation. Solutions to this new class of problems, referred to as "situation awareness" applications, include surveillance via large-scale distributed camera networks and personalized traffic alerts in vehicular networks using road and traffic sensing. A breakthrough in system software technology is needed to meet the challenges posed by these applications since they are latency-sensitive, data intensive, involve heavy-duty processing, and must run 24x7 while dealing with the vagaries of the physical world. This project aims to make such a breakthrough, through new distributed programming idioms and resource allocation strategies. To better identify the challenges posed by situation awareness applications, the project includes experimental deployment of the new technologies in partnership with the City of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The central activity is to develop appropriate system abstractions for design of situation awareness applications and encapsulate them in distributed programming idioms for domain experts (e.g., vision researchers). The resulting programming framework allows association of critical attributes such as location, time, and mobility with sensed data to reason about causal events along these axes. To meet the latency constraints of these applications, the project develops geospatial resource allocation mechanisms that complement and support the distributed programming idioms, extending the utility-computing model of cloud computing to the edge of the network. Since the applications often have to work with inexact knowledge of what is happening in the physical environment, owing to limitations of the distributed sensing sources, the project also investigates system support for application-specific information fusion and spatio-temporal analyses to increase the quality of results. Efforts toward development of a future cyber-physical systems workforce include creation of a new multidisciplinary curriculum around situation awareness, exploration of new immersive learning pedagogical styles, and mentoring and providing research experience to undergraduate students through research experiences and internships aimed at increasing participation of women and minorities.