| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 12, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 12, 2013 |
| Award Number: | 1330077 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Sankar Basu
sabasu@nsf.gov (703)292-7843 CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2013 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2017 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $742,695.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $742,695.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
506 S WRIGHT ST URBANA IL US 61801-3620 (217)333-2187 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
IL US 61820-7473 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Information Technology Researc, Special Projects - CNS, CPS-Cyber-Physical Systems |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
This cross-disciplinary project brings together a team of engineering and computer science researchers to create, validate, and demonstrate the value of new techniques for ensuring that systems composed of combinations of hardware, software, and humans are designed to operate in a truly synergistic and safe fashion. One notable and increasingly common feature of these "Cyber-Physical-Human" (CPH) systems is that the responsibility for safe operation and performance is typically shared by increasingly sophisticated automation in the form of hardware and software, and humans who direct and oversee the behavior of automation yet may need to intervene to take over manual or shared system control when unexpected environmental situations or hardware or software failures occur. The ultimate goal is to achieve levels of safety and performance in system operation that exceed the levels attainable by either skilled human operators or completely autonomous systems acting alone. To do so, the research team will draw upon their expertise in the design of robust, fault-tolerant control systems, in the design of complexity-reduction architectures for software verification, and in human factors techniques for cognitive modeling to assure high levels of human situation awareness through effective interface design. By doing so, the safety, cost and performance benefits of increasingly sophisticated automation can be achieved without the frequently observed safety risks caused by automation creating greater distance between human operators and system operation. The techniques will be iteratively created and empirically evaluated using experimentation in human-in-the-loop simulations, including a medium-fidelity aircraft and flight simulator and a simulation of assistive automation in a medical context.
More broadly, this research is expected to impact and inform the engineering of future CPH systems generally, for all industries and systems characterized by an increasing use of hardware and software automation directed and overseen by humans who provide an additional layer of safety in expected situations, Examples include highway and automotive automation, aerospace and air traffic control automation, semi-automated process control systems, and the many forms of automated systems and devices increasingly being used in medical contexts, such as the ICU and operating room. This research is also expected to inform government and industry efforts to provide safety certification criteria for the technologies used in CPH systems, and to educate a next generation of students trained in the cross-disciplinary skills and abilities needed to engineer the CPH systems of the future. The investigators will organize industry, academic, and government workshops to disseminate results and mentor students who are members of underrepresented groups through the course of this research project.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Many engineering systems being designed today involve an integration of not only computational (or cyber) elements and physical elements (Cyber-Physical Systems, or CPS), but also humans who interact with them. Transportation systems such as highly automated cars and planes, with human drivers and pilots, are just a few of many examples. The focus of this project was to create novel design concepts and technologies to ensure a safe and effective coupling of CPS systems with the humans who interact with them. More specifically, the research focused on finding effective ways to couple the technological and human elements of these systems to leverage the contributions to safety that both high levels of automation and human expertise bring to ensuring safe system operation, ideally achieving levels of safety and performance exceeding what could be gained by either automation or humans acting alone.
From the perspective of intellectual merit, our primary research outcomes included a general framework for the design of these systems. The framework, or system architecture, is based on using control automation to provide the safety benefits for which it was designed, yet also providing the humans interacting with these systems advanced interfaces making the "reasoning" underlying the behavior of control automation transparent. These interfaces thereby enhance humans' situation awareness and thus empower them with actionable information for making decisions about if and when to intervene in hands-on system control. Similarly, the architecture allows the control automation to intervene in system control when human control activity pushes operation beyond known safety limits or envelopes. The primary illustration of this design concept was in an aviation context, making use of a human-in-the-loop flight simulator and involving highly skilled pilots.
This research has been disseminated in various journal articles, book chapters, conference presentations and publications, invited lectures, and masters theses and doctoral dissertations. It is premature to fully assess the broader impacts of this research. However, the project, and interest in it, has already extended beyond the aviation domain. In medicine, for example, some members of our research team have started to apply our general design framework, albeit a slightly modified version in which medical best practices substitute for control automation in providing information about safety limits and envelopes (for patient care). As in the aviation context, expert human practitioners in this medical context are being provided with advanced displays to enhance their situation awareness about both patient state and the treatment actions that should be taken based on that state according to these medical best practices. The research has also come to the attention of the research and practitioner community currently involved with designing intelligent cars, where a chief problem is to ensure a safe and effective coupling of human drivers and safety-related control automation. We believe that the outcomes of this project could have direct relevance to, and applications in, a very broad set of industries involved with coupling humans and CPS systems. We certainly intend to participate in any future opportunities to actively facilitate technology transfer.
Last Modified: 12/30/2017
Modified by: Alex C Kirlik
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