Noyori Conference Hall, Nagoya University, Japan
Decenber 4th, 2008
There has been a great deal of excitement in recent years concerning the evolution of sensor webs of smart dust. There has been a very substantive active world wide in this area and in particular at Berkeley there have now been over six generation of "motes" for these sensor webs, and at least three new start ups have arisen to commercialize these developments. I will survey these developments and where they have brought us in what is undoubtedly a very important new class of computing involving an integration of communication and computing. I will describe how the technology push is matched by the applications pull of numerous different applications.
Throughout the talk, I will highlight the efforts of my group and that of my colleagues especially Culler, Pister and Bajcsy in "closing the loop" around these networked embedded systems. We believe that this closing the loop brings into sharp focus the real time constraints and issues inherent in the use of networked embedded systems. Further, the most important new directions in sensor webs involve this new direction beyond simply sensing and monitoring the physical environment and infrastructure. In particular, I will describe the range of methods and algorithms needed to track multiple targets in a sensor web and to be able to pursue them. The culmination of this project was a 557 node demonstration that we conducted at the Richmond Field Station in August 2005.
Further, with our increase dependency on computing and communication to instrument physical infrastructures, such as electric power, water, gas, etc. we find that they are vulnerable to information attack of networked embedded systems. To address these grand challenge societal problem, in June 2005, the NSF has established a Science and Technology Center entitled "TRUST: Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technologies" between Berkeley (lead), CMU, Cornell, Stanford and Vanderbilt with outreach partners at San Jose State, Mills and Smith College. I will give a preview of the efforts of the Center in the cybersecurity (formulated as a game) of networked embedded systems.
Biography
An internationally recognized expert on embedded and autonomous software, Dean Sastry has an exceptional background in technology research, spearheading projects to improve the nation's cyber security and network infrastructure. He has held leadership positions in the federal government and on the Berkeley campus, most recently as director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
His numerous honors include membership in the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the IEEE, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council. He also received the President of India Gold Medal, the IBM Faculty Development Award, an honorary degree from Harvard and the distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology in 1999.
- Born May 15, 1956 in Bombay, India (age 51)
- 1977 Bachelor of Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
- 1979, 80, 81 M.S. EECS, MA Mathematics, Ph.D. EECS, UC Berkeley
- 1981-1983 assistant professor, MIT
- 1983 joined UC Berkeley faculty
- 1996-1999 Director of the Electronics Research Laboratory, UC Berkeley
- 2000 Director of the Information Technology Office at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Department of Defense.)
- 2001-2004 Chair, EECS Department, UC Berkeley
- 2005-2007 Director, CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society), UC Berkeley and the Banatao Institute@CITRIS Berkeley
Honors
- Member - American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2004)
- Member - National Academy of Engineering (elected 2001)
- Fellow of the IEEE (1994)
- NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award winner (1985)
- Holds faculty appointments in Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Department of Bioengineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Biography
Paul J. Werbos is an IEEE Fellow and won the IEEE Neural Net Pioneer Award for the original invention of backpropagation, in his 1974 Harvard PhD thesis, reprinted in his book Roots from Wiley. His 1967 article in Cybernetica first proposed the idea of approximating dynamic programming as a way to improve reinforcement learning, the key theme of the new book Handbook of Learning and Approximate Dynamic Programming from IEEE Press. He is Program Director for computational intelligence at NSF, and seeks more proposals in that area. He represents CIS on the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee, and serves on governing boards of INNS, of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, and of the Millennium Project of the United Nations University (http://millennium-project.org ). See arxiv.org for papers on quantum foundations and technology.
He also has two degrees in economics from Harvard and the London Schoolof Economics.
See www.werbos.com or
http://www.nsf.gov/staff/staff_bio.jsp?lan=pwerbos&org=NSF
Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) technology enables us to design and fabricate transducers matching the length scale of a biological cell. Recently, we can directly investigate and manipulate nano-scale subjects with the advancements of nano technologies. Micro/nano transducer systems thus allow us to control, (i.e. sensing decision and actuation), targeted physical phenomena or biological systems.
Cellular activities are manifestations of millions of biomolecular interactions governed by the self-organized networks of signal and regulatory pathways. Agile adaptability and robustness to environment challenges are commonly observed in all cell types.
An engineering system is developed based on known design principles and requirements. A biological system is governed by less understood self organization principles. In order to resolve this fundamental difference, we need to seamless integrate micro/nano transducers will the biological system, so that we can interrogate and manipulate cells for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.
In this presentation, we will present a unique approach which employs an engineering system control scheme to direct a cellular system toward a desired phenotype through combinatorial drug stimulations [1]. With the system control, we can rapidly search the optimal drug combination from a large number, say 1,000,000, potential trials. In addition, much lower drug doses than would be necessary if the drugs were used alone; in fact, the concentrations of the drugs were only about 10 percent of that required when used individually.
This work is supported by NIH nanomedicine roadmap program.
1. Wong, P.K, Yu, F., Shahangian A., Cheng, G., Sun, R. and Ho, C.M., “ Closed-Loop Control of Cellular Functions Using Combinatory Drugs Guided by a Stochastic Search Algorithm”, Proceeding of National Academy of Science, Vol. 105, no.13 pp. 5105-5110, 2008.
Biography
Chih-Ming Ho received the BSME from National Taiwan University and the Ph.D. in Mechanics and Material Sciences from The Johns Hopkins University. Ho started his career at the University of Southern California and rose to the rank of Full Professor. In 1991, Dr. Ho moved to the University of California, Los Angeles to lead the establishment of the micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) program in UCLA. Currently, he holds the Ben Rich-Lockheed Martin Chair Professor and Distinguished Professor in UCLA School of Engineering. He is the Director of Center for Cell Control (http://CenterForCellControl.org). He served as UCLA Associate Vice Chancellor for Research from 2001 to 2005.
He is known for his researches in bio-nano technology, micro/nano fluidics, and turbulence. He was ranked by ISI as one of the top 250 most cited researchers in all engineering category. In 1997, Dr. Ho was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In the next year, he was elected as an Academician of Academia Sinica which honors scholars of Chinese origin with exceptional achievements in liberal arts and sciences. Dr. Ho holds seven honorary chair professorships. He has published 260 papers and 10 patents. He has presented 120 keynote talks in international conferences. Dr. Ho was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society as well as American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
In addition to his academic accomplishments, he has made extensive contributions to the professional societies around the world. He has chaired the Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) in American Physical Society. He is on the advisory board for AIAA Journal. He is a member of the IEEE/ASME JMEMS coordinating Committee. He was an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering and an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal. He also has served as a Guest Editor for Annual Review of Fluid Dynamics.
On the international level, he has served on advisory panels to provide assistance to many countries and regions including China, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and United Kingdom, on the developments of nano/micro technologies.
The International Space Station (ISS) has been under construction since
1998 and will be completed by the early 2010s. The Japanese Experiment
Module (JEM) called “Kibo” is carried by three Space Shuttle flights and
attached to the ISS piece by piece. During the first two flights, the Experiment
Logistics Module Pressurized Section and the Pressurized Module with the
JEM Robotic Arm (JEMRMS) were assembled on orbit in March and June 2008.
These assembly operations have been successfully performed by either the
Space Station Remote Manipulator (SSRMS) or the Shuttle Remote Manipulator
(SRMS).
The third flight ‘Flight 2J/A’ will launch and assemble the Exposed Facility and the Experiment Logistics Module Exposed Section in May 2009. During the Flight 2J/A, sophisticated robotics operations are required due to the geometrical constraints and JEM unique berthing mechanisms. While SSRMS will be utilized as main assembly arm, SRMS and JEMRMS will also be used for supporting the berthing task. The berthing operation becomes one of key and critical tasks on the Flight 2J/A assembly.
In this talk, assembly of the successful first two flights is summarized, and then the preparation of the Flight 2J/A berthing integration will be also introduced. The berthing integration includes berthing mechanism, its load analysis, robotics operation, EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) support. It involves the large community among agencies (NASA/CSA/JAXA) and their supporting teams such as flight crews, flight control teams, mission management teams, engineering teams as well as safety teams.
Biography
Hiroshi Ueno is currently associate senior engineer at JEM Development Project Team in JAXA. He received B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Science and Engineering Department at Waseda University in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He was visiting scientist at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in 1990-1991. He was visiting engineer at Field and Space Robotics Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 and 2004. He received research encouragement award from the Robotics Society of Japan in 1992. He received Project Management Professional (PMP) in 2007. He is interested in the manned and unmanned space robotics for future exploration.
During the last decades, mobile robots have been a classic subject for robotics researchers, covering a large number of topics ranging from image processing, SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping), all the way to control technologies and swarm techniques. However, these techniques did not see many applications in road transport until the Prometheus Project in Europe (1986-1994) and the AHS (Automated Hignway Systems) in Japan and in the USA and for a long time it was considered by many to be impossible to implement safety critical function in large production road vehicles
However, some robotics techniques are now finally arriving in production vehicles with systems involving sensing, decision making and control of the vehicle. The first such systems concerned the “longitudinal control” of the vehicle with a radar (or lidar) sensing the distance (and sometime their lateral position) to the vehicles ahead and controlling the acceleration and braking of the “ego vehicle” to maintain a safe distance. Now vision systems can assist the driver to keep his or her vehicle on the lane (“lateral control”). So, how far are we from a fully autonomous vehicle?
The DARPA challenges in 2004 and 2005 have shown us that automated vehicles are feasible in “simple” environments and in particular when we do not have to consider other moving vehicles. The next challenge from DARPA (Urban Challenge) will try to address this problem. However, we are still far from operating a fully autonomous vehicle in daily traffic, especially in urban environments where the scene complexity is very large. In order to operate fully autonomous vehicles in a realistic way, we therefore have to take the same approach as in the manufacturing industry when the first robots were introduced: simplify the environment.
This is the approach which is being taken now with the cybercars. These vehicles are designed for a fully automated urban transport of passengers or goods and they operate on a road network for on-demand, door to door transport. At the moment, these roads are more or less protected from intrusions by people or other types of vehicles. The cybercars which have been designed and tested in the early 2000’s are now being put in operation in various cities throughout Europe (www.citymobil-project.org). Although their environment has been somewhat simplified, they must use advanced robotics technologies to avoid obstacles and plan their trajectories even when they have to cross the path of other similar vehicles (with which they communicate).
Biography
Michel Parent is currently the program manager at INRIA of the R&D team on advanced road transport (IMARA research group). This group focuses on research and development of new forms of road transport and in particular on fully automated vehicles (the cybercars). Michel Parent has been or is the coordinator of several European projects on this topic.
Before his current position which he holds since 1991, Michel Parent has spent half of his time in research and academia at such places as Stanford University and MIT in the USA and INRIA in France, and the other half in the robotics industry. He is the author of several books on robotics, vision and intelligent vehicles, and numerous publications and patents. He was the coordinator of the European Project CyberCars between 2001 and 2004 and this project is continued now in CyberCars2 (2006-2009).
Michel Parent has an engineering degree from the French Aeronautics School (ENSAE), a Masters degree in Operation Research and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, both from Case Western Reserve University, USA.
There are various proposals for advancement the exploration, development,and the production of oilfields by using information technology (IT) efficiently.
IT enables to improve centralization and effective use of in-house expertise by sharing information, more over it enables to provide the right piece of information to the right people at the right time. For example, data acquisition from oilfield and data transfer to head office is recently performed in near real-time. This execution allows quick decision-making and it is expected that the success rate of oilfield discovery is improved, the time and the cost of drilling is reduced, the production operation is optimized, the customer satisfaction becomes greater, etc. We, in JOGMEC, called these applied system in oilfield Digital Oil Field (DOF).
DOF was spread in international oil companies at the end of the 90's andit is spreading to independent oil companies as well as national oil corporationsin the oil-producing countries by the drastic change of the environmentin information processing such as the increase of the processing speedand the memory capacity, the improvements of the communication speed, thelowering the CAPEX and OPEX, etc. Even some small and medium-sized oilcompanies have achieved considerable amount of profit by placed DOF atthe center of operational management. DOF technology will become commonsense of oil companies, and it may become one of the requirements whenan oil company enters into a new field exploration and development in oil-producingcountry.
In the presentation, the presenter will briefly explain oil explorationand development, and will cover some case studies of DOF. The abstractgoes here.
Biography
Makoto Ichikawa is Director of Petroleum Engineering Research Division of Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC, former Japan National Oil Corporation). He has been with JOGMEC (JNOC) since 1984 and has worked in operations and reservoir engineering positions in Japan, Canada and United Arab Emirates. When he was in Canada, he was Vice President, Technical at Japan Canada Oil Sands Limited. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Tokyo.