The "Internet of Things" (IoT) describes the idea that the ordinary objects in our environment (e.g. buildings, streets, cars, refrigerators, packages, clothing, food, even pets) are equipped with small electronics capable of performing data collection, analysis, communication, and autonomous operation. However programming literally everything requires new design principles, new software architectures, and new security mechanisms that make it possible to unify and simplify the development of IoT. The vast array of different embedded devices, computers, networks, and storage media must be made to work together by the software they support. Unfortunately, existing software systems require a similarly complex and heterogeneous amalgamation of technologies, making IoT software development for them very difficult and error prone. This planning project will pursue a technology-enabled integration of new software abstractions, tool chains, hardware specialization, programming and deployment support, verification and security advances, and program portability infrastructure that together tame this heterogeneity, complexity, and scale that today is impeding IoT innovation.
By simplifying software engineering and deployment for IoT, this project will broaden participation in innovation and enable development of new applications that extend human perception and control of the physical world through digital infrastructure. In the same way that Internet search has made it easier for people to "remember" information, essentially enhancing human memory, IoT has perhaps greater potential to revolutionize society by enhancing human perception and control over everything people encounter in their day-to-day lives. To facilitate this next "digital quantum leap" for society, this project will develop research prototypes, system design artifacts, and educational and outreach activities, and establish new multidisciplinary collaborations that guide and inform the research. To ensure that the results are immediately useful to developers and researchers across disciplines, the project will also use "real-world" IoT testbeds and applications from a number of scientific domains (e.g. agriculture, astronomy, and physics) for end-to-end validation, evaluation, and demonstration of the research potential and impact. Finally, it will accelerate this impact by making all of its digital artifacts -- its design technologies and its software -- freely available as open source.
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.
