This collaborative project, developing a large experimental outdoors facility (consisting of a large sensor network) to promote cyber-physical computing research, stimulates several areas of practical cyber-physical computing research, including: . Software engineering for cyber-physical systems; . Sensor Network development tools and programming abstractions; . Low-level communication challenges; . Embedded and real-time computing; and . Data mining of the physical world (to identify anomalous or interesting patterns in streams of real-time data). Cyber-physical systems enhance our interaction with the external environment in a similar fashion to the way the Internet changed how we communicate. Hence cyber-physical computing represents an era in computing where logical processing is more tightly intertwined with the external physical world. These systems offer a myriad of new challenges that stem from combining processing, communication, and physical interaction with the external world. Promoting practical cyber-physical computing research entails adequate experimental testbeds that allow evaluation, validation, and fine tuning of different ideas. The fine-granularity instrumentation required serves as a unifying theme across various studies. Sensor network technology is expected to economically address this need once key sensor network research impediments are resolved. This research facility is likely to be unique in the nation in its scale.
Broader Impacts: This work creates opportunities for interdisciplinary research where problems are solved utilizing CS/CE technology in the context of real applications drawn from environmental and atmospheric science, biology, anthropology, geology, agriculture, etc. The facility enables, among others, studies of infectious disease propagation, climate change, deforestation, and global warming. Additionally, the infrastructure offers active learning educational opportunities.
