| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 4, 2018 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 7, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 1823230 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Marilyn McClure
mmcclure@nsf.gov (703)292-5197 CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2018 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $550,949.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $550,949.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2019 = $97,846.00 FY 2020 = $124,259.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
520 LEE ENTRANCE STE 211 AMHERST NY US 14228-2577 (716)645-2634 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
338E Davis Hall Buffalo NY US 14260-2500 |
| 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): |
CSR-Computer Systems Research, CCRI-CISE Cmnty Rsrch Infrstrc |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| 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
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an emerging computing platform increasingly becoming common in our society. Unfortunately, most UAV systems today are either proprietary, or specific to goals of aviation and robotic missions. This project will develop an open-source and extensible software infrastructure for UAVs to promote research and education of this exciting technology.
The proposal will result in an infrastructure to allow for extensible UAV software design across the computing stack, spanning operating systems (OS), virtual machines (VM), compilers, programming languages, and applications. This significantly shifts the focus of state of the art of UAV software where refined support is limited to hardware drivers and robotics control, OS/VM support is primitive, and high-level Application Programming Interface is minimal. The resulting infrastructure will promote whole-stack extensibility, portability, resource awareness, and application friendliness of UAV systems. The infrastructure will enable researchers from non- UAV specific domains to conduct research on the platform.
The infrastructure will impact researchers spanning areas of avionics, robotics, real-time systems, programming languages, and software engineering. Other beneficiaries of the proposed infrastructure include students and UAV users. The technologies developed under this award will provide training and research opportunities for Ph.D. students, master's students, and advanced undergraduates in UAV education. UAVs, robotics, and aviation are interesting and exciting to k-12 students. The artifacts from this project will be tailored for student outreach.
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.
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.
This proposal developed a Java-based, extensible, and adaptable software infrastructure for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Traditionally known for their military applications, UAVs have recently emerged as a promising platform for civilian tasks, such as merchandise delivery, traffic control, news reporting, natural disaster management, mobile social networks, and Internet connectivity in third-world countries. Current UAV systems are programmed in low level languages, require separate hardware for safely deploying payload applications, require low-level system changes to specify adaptive behavior, and are not easily accessible to non domain experts.
Our developed infrastructure is Java-based, modular, extensible, and accessible. It supports many types of Virtual Machines (VMs), including traditional, real-time, and multi-VMs, two types of flight controllers, two flight simulators, and off-the-shelf commodity hardware. This modularity allows for the specialization of UAV deployments in both simulation and real-world flight. Time and memory safety afforded by our infrastructure allows for deploying off-the-shelf payload applications on the same hardware, while preserving the integrity of the flight controller. In addition to the core UAV system, this proposal developed a domain specific, declarative programming language for specifying adaptive behavior for UAVs. Our domain specific language provides extensibility for our system, by allowing programmers to develop dynamic flight plans by specifying the UAV?s reactions to environmental factors. The combination of a Java based flight control, support for payload applications, coupled with a declarative programming language for specifying adaptive behavior, provides an accessible platform for developing complex and dynamic UAV systems for non experts. The infrastructure has been validated experimentally using both simulated and real-world flights. This proposal has resulted in the training and development of six Ph.D. students and four masters students as well as providing in-class educational opportunities for both undergraduate and masters students to program UAV systems.
Last Modified: 11/30/2022
Modified by: Lukasz Ziarek
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