This planning grant serves to establish the basis for a new Industry/University Cooperative Research Center Embedded Systems with Arizona State University serving as the lead institution and the University of California Irvine and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale as research sites. The proposed Center will focus on Robust, Energy Efficient and Networked Embedded Systems. Within the overarching theme, the research will be organized into six main thrust areas: Software design for embedded systems; Power, energy and thermal management; Embedded processor architecture and CAD; Networked embedded systems; Testing, fault tolerance and dependability; and Robust embedded IC design.