Qiang Zeng - US grants

Internet of Things (IoT) devices and systems have a lot of applications, such as smart home, smart office, healthcare, elderly care, and industrial systems. International Data Corporation (IDC) report shows that over 815 million smart home IoT devices were shipped in 2019 and predicts that this number will reach 1.39 billion in 2023. There has been extensive research on IoT and related areas. However, most existing IoT research uses small-scale, ad hoc and non-realistic testbeds or simulation tools to generate data and/or evaluate their work. The U.S. IoT research community lacks high-fidelity experimental facilities to support rigorous and repeatable experimental evaluations of networked IoT systems. The objective of this project is to address the critical issue by developing an integrated IoT infrastructure that provides remotely accessible, configurable, and programmable IoT testbeds. The infrastructure is the first realistic large-scale one, and it includes a smart-home & IoT hardware testbed, a smart heath care testbed, and a smart-office IoT testbed. The testbeds will enable novel and high-quality research in many areas, such as hardware design, IoT, healthcare, elderly care, smart home/office, smart city, etc. This project will engage a broad community (including academia, industry, and government) in the design, development and management of the infrastructure. The project will integrate research with curriculum development, and broaden participation of computing by including underrepresented students and the K-12 community.

Shared, remotely accessible, configurable, programmable, and observable IoT testbeds are in great need for researchers at different organizations to experiment and test their work at scale. This project addresses the critical issue by developing an integrated IoT infrastructure. The infrastructure includes three remotely accessible, configurable, and programmable IoT testbeds using one uniform interface: a smart-home & IoT hardware testbed, a smart heath care testbed, and a smart-office IoT testbed. Each testbed consists of several remotely-controllable/programmable robots (to emulate human activities), a large number of smart IoT devices, and an IoT edge server (to store and process IoT data locally. The smart-home & IoT hardware testbed also includes FPGA boards and a high-end mixed-signal oscilloscope, for developing the capabilities to interface with robots and IoT devices, and override their control as needed to further customize their functions. In this project, the team will develop hardware and software (e.g., smart IoT applications (apps), IoT management software, and web interfaces) to grant these off-the-shell IoT devices such remote access features. The proposed infrastructure will enable many new CISE research opportunities, such as remote hardware design and evaluation, configurable IoT hardware test, IoT research based on realistic testbeds and real IoT data, and efficient healthcare and elderly care utilizing smart IoT. With the three IoT testbeds, for the first time the broad research communities (such as hardware design, IoT, healthcare, elderly care, and smart home/office) will be able to generate, access and collect real data, as well as instrument and run experiments using real devices. This project will enable, extend and accelerate high-quality research in the broad areas, and contribute to bringing different communities together.

The proposed infrastructure will enable a number of new CISE research opportunities and support high-fidelity research in healthcare, elderly care, smart home/office, IoT, hardware design, etc. (2) This project will engage a broad community (including academia, industry, and government). (3) The project will integrate the infrastructure development and the supported research into their curriculum development. This proposed project will directly foster new research and educational opportunities at Temple University, and two EPSCoR institutions (University of Arkansas and University of South Carolina). (4) The PIs will engage students of underrepresented groups and the K-12 community into this project. (5) In addition to publications, the PIs will create a publicly-accessible GitHub repository to share the project results.

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.

There are over one hundred Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms. Each has its own strengths and limitations. To get the best of each, a smart environment may use multiple IoT platforms. However, when multiple IoT platforms coexist in the same physical space, many unique problems arise, which are referred to as Multi-Platform Coexistence (MPC) problems. The objectives of the project are systematically to describe, categorize and measure MPC problems and design and build effective solutions to address them.

Multiple platforms for a smart environment do not necessarily share consistent observations about IoT device states. As a result, automation applications installed on these platforms may issue incorrect and even conflicting commands. In addition, the assumption made by existing work that a single platform has a complete view and control of all IoT devices does not hold true. Thus, the project is to uncover, measure, and formalize unique problems due to coexistence and interaction of multiple IoT platforms in the same physical space, and propose novel designs, techniques, algorithms and build systems to resolve them.

The project can benefit numerous smart-environment users and related industries by revealing and handling MPC problems and supporting harmonious coexistence of IoT platforms. The proposed research will be integrated into curriculum development. These efforts will meet the growing national need for professionals in IoT. The project will promote the participation of students from underrepresented groups in IoT research. Furthermore, it will involve collaboration with professionals from IoT industries for assessment of the systems and technology transfer.

Data, code, system designs, documentations, and experiment results will be released through a publicly accessible GitHub repository: https://quz105.github.io/MPC/. The repository will be maintained for at least five years after the project ends.

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.