The NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) on Robots and Sensors for Human Well-Being (ROSE-HUB) Phase II will play a leadership role in nurturing and accelerating the deployment of robotics and intelligent sensor technologies in a wide range of application domains key to the national economy, e.g., transportation, energy, logistics, manufacturing, and infrastructure and the well-being of the society, e.g., in healthcare. The ROSE-HUB center will facilitate center university researchers to work with partners from industry, government, other universities, and non-profit organizations to seek solutions to critical real-world challenges.
The research efforts at the Clemson site focus on exploring the integration, deployment and validation of Connected Autonomy paradigm in networked real-time robotics and automation systems-of-systems. This new generation of distributed intelligent robotic systems build upon recent advances in AI-enhanced perceptual processing and low-latency real-time wireless communications within the real-time sense-think-act robotics paradigm. Tangible embodiment into integrative use-cases and domain-customization remain crucial for success with edge- and cloud-based autonomy systems. To this end, we will focus both on process-improvement evaluations as well as creation of exemplar demonstrators for the advanced manufacturing, agribusiness, automotive, and logistics verticals.
Center research will focus on applications including physical/mental health, robots and sensor systems to assist humans, innovative robot designs for monitoring and data collection, precision agriculture, digitization of construction processes, intelligent transportation systems, etc. Research will impact: a) industrial members by inserting research into product pipelines, b) researchers by exploring new ideas and application domains, c) students by providing hands-on experience and future employment potential, and d) academic curricula. Additionally, annual technology days will attract middle school students from underrepresented groups to engineering, and outreach programs to local K-16 institutions will encourage pursuit of engineering education.
The project will create hardware and software and collect experimental data from fixed and mobile robots, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and sensors. A data management and dissemination framework will be established. The software components include: (i) system framework software (e.g., low-level software that operates electro-mechanical systems, i.e., robots, UAVs, etc.), (ii) software for the planning, control, sensing, and learning algorithms, (iii) software for demonstration testbeds and prototypes. The data retention period is five years after the conclusion of the award. The data will be released as it becomes available to the http://rosehubiucrc.github.io site.
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.
