Top 100 Electronics,China Electric Tools

 
Dr. Alex Huang

Dr. Alex Huang has been awarded $636,284 by Cree, Inc. for research on Testing, Characterization and Design Optimization of High Voltage SiC Gate Turn-off (GTO) Thyristors.

The award will run from January 5th, 2013 to September 4th, 2016.

Research Abstract: NCSU's FREEDM Systems Center will assist Cree in the testing, characterization and design optimization of future generation of high voltage gate turn-off (GTO) thyristior.

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Dr. Michael B. Steer

Dr. Michael B. Steer has been awarded $450,000 by the US Army - Army Research Office for research on Time-Frequency and Non-Laplacian Phenomena at Radio Frequencies.

The award will run from September 30th, 2012 to August 31st, 2016.

Research Abstract

Recent phenomenological investigations of the fundamental limits to the performance of radio, radar and sensor systems have revealed radio-frequency (RF) interference effects that do not have the expected integer calculus descriptions.  Some of these effects derive from electro-thermal diffusive interactions and it is believed that many other effects similarly derive from diffusion. Also, time-frequency effects have been discovered in which the temporal response of electronics excited by a pulsed RF signal is significantly longer than linear frequency-domain analysis would imply. It is believed that these derive from diffusion-like effects as well and require fractional calculus.  The project's premise is that using integer calculus-based analysis has resulted in sources of interference in RF systems being missed.  This project investigates the underlying physics of diffusive RF phenomena. Time-domain fractional calculus-based descriptions transformed into the frequency-domain become non-Laplacian (i.e. non-integer-based).  However, conventional analysis of RF structures is based on integer-based Laplacian frequency-domain analysis derived from integer calculus.   The project extends the engineer's RF analysis toolkit to include non-Laplacian models and abstractions. The work will lead to new paradigms for understanding interference at RF, for enhancing RF systems, for deriving fundamental limits of performance at RF, for developing signatures, and for manipulating RF electronics.

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Dr. Cranos Williams

Drs. Cranos Williams (PI), Terri Long (CoPI), James Tuck (CoPI), and Joel Ducoste (CoPI) have been awarded $999,754 by the National Science Foundation for research on Dynamic Regulatory Modeling of the Iron Deficiency Response in Arabidopsis thaliana.

The award will run from August 15th, 2012 to July 31st, 2017.

Research Abstract

Multicellular organisms such as plants react to abiotic stress with a multitude of physiological and molecular responses orchestrated by key regulatory proteins, or transcription factors. Experimental datasets, such as transcriptional profiles, are often used to identify critical, yet, uncharacterized transcription factors in these responses.  Limitations in these datasets caused by constraints in experimental perturbations and finite experimental resources are the reasons why traditional approaches have revealed few key regulating and controlling elements, particularly in model organisms such as Arabidopsis thaliana.  The PIs hypothesize that additional computer-based simulations from dynamic gene regulatory models can be used in combination with clustering approaches to expand the perturbation space and assess secondary and tertiary control mechanisms, leading to the identification of hidden regulatory relationships between genes and transcription factors. They propose to develop a novel modeling and parallel computing paradigm to identify previously uncharacterized regulatory components that control iron homeostasis in A. thaliana across multiple cell types.

The interdisciplinary approach proposed by these PIs presents a new paradigm that 1) unifies novel genomic experimental techniques, engineering modeling approaches, and parallel computing to clarify the role of known regulatory elements and 2) identifies new regulating components involved in iron homeostasis within and across different cell types. Their integration of systems engineering, plant biology, and computer engineering will help create new solutions to existing problems and encourages a vision for addressing challenging issues that have, to date, remained intimidating using traditional approaches. Their results will lead to methods for stretching critical resources and increasing crop yields to feed the projected 9 billion people in 2050 through development of plants that exhibit improved function in low nutrient soils, or plants that can contain elevated nutrient content.

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Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty

Aranya Chakrabortty has been awarded $360,000 by the National Science Foundation for research on SEP Collaborative: Integrating Heterogeneous Energy Resources For Sustainable Power Networks - A Systems Approach.

The award will run from September 15th, 2012 to August 31st, 2016.

Research Abstract

This project will take a unique approach in examining how management and control of large-scale and distributed energy resources can contribute to both stabilization and improving the performance of for power systems with high penetration of renewable energy. The research will involve a system theoretic end-to-end analysis from detailed characterization of the energy sources through propagation of these inputs through the power transmission and distribution network. An important aspect of the proposed research is the ability of this interdisciplinary team to examine not only the technical and physical system challenges but to include the related regulatory, policy and market challenges that must be dealt with in order to implement any proposed power system changes.

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Dr. John Muth

Dr. Tania Paskova and Dr. John Muth have been awarded $383,532 by the National Science Foundation for research on III-Nitride LED Structures on Sidewall Grown Semipolar Facets.

The award will run from July 1st, 2012 to June 30th, 2015.

Research Abstract

The proposed research addresses a long-standing issue of growing importance to the nitride-based optoelectronic technology, namely the internal quantum efficiency of nitride emitters in green-yellow region, and how the nonpolar/semipolar alignment of the active device regions can help to improve the device performance.  An in-depth investigation will be undertaken to gain a comprehensive understanding of the basic properties of semipolar GaN/InGaN LED structures produced by lateral sidewall growth. The dominating growth mechanisms, the defect formation and evolution, the In and doping element incorporation efficiency, and the strain in structures with different semipolar orientations will be studied, aiming to establish the best approach for producing low-defect-density semipolar LED structures with enhanced internal quantum efficiency.

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Dr. Edgar Lobaton

Dr. Edgar Lobaton, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University, has been awarded $206,192 by the University of California - Berkeley for research on Provably Safe Automotive Cyber-Physical Systems with Humans-in-the-Loop.

The award will run from October 1st, 2012 to September 30th, 2015.

Research Abstract: The automotive sector is one of the richest targets for emerging innovations in Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Increased content electronics, non-contact sensors, controls and communication with the environment and the driver will change the way we drive and interact with our cars in the near future. However, despite the enormous number of fatalities and injuries on US and world roads, there is an enormous gap between research achievements in autonomous drive and the active safety systems currently available in production vehicles. We propose a paradigm shift which looks at whole cyber physical vehicle/environment/driver and thus address all its three main critical components: (A) the vehicle/environment interaction, (B) the driver uncertainty and (C) the provably-safe intervention under the predicted uncertainty of A and B.  We will develop a novel science for  of Cyber-Physical Systems with the goal of obtaining a provably safe human-centric autonomy where  certification is evidence-based and evolves with the system (as new driver behaviors, scenes, slipping dynamics enter in the database of the CPS we construct in real-time). Robustness is measured against bounded state-dependent uncertainty of a driver/vehicle interaction model and of the scene reconstruction.

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Dr. Dror Baron

Dr. Dror Baron has been awarded $422,732 by the National Science Foundation for research on CIF: Small: Universal Signal Estimation from Noisy Measurements.

The award will run from September 1st, 2012 to August 31st, 2015.

Research Abstract

Motivation: A ubiquitous feature in many signal processing systems is to learn the input statistics from historical data. In these systems, Bayesian methods perform statistically optimal signal processing. However, there are applications including file compression, speech recognition, network monitoring, and compressed sensing in which it might be impractical to learn the statistics a priori. In such applications, a statistical approach that adapts to the data at hand must be used.
The information theory community has championed the use of universal algorithms, they achieve the best possible statistical performance asymptotically despite not knowing the input statistics.
These algorithms have had tremendous impact in lossless compression, where the goal is to describe data as succinctly as possible while allowing a decoder to reproduce the input perfectly. In sharp contrast, universal algorithms have had little impact on other areas.

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Dr. Eric Rotenberg

Dr. Eric Rotenberg has been awarded $350,000 by the National Science Foundation for research on SHF: Small: Design for Competitive Automated Layout (DCAL) of Mobile Application Processor.

The award will run from August 1st, 2012 to July 31st, 2015.

Research Abstract

For two decades, personal computers and servers have been powered by increasingly sophisticated superscalar processors. The last few years has even witnessed the introduction of superscalar processors into smart phones and tablet PCs, in order to provide richer user experiences. There are important trends in both domains: server-class processors require unsustainable design effort, as evidenced by a select few, highly trained, large design teams in industry proliferating superscalar processors; mobile devices are evolving at an extraordinary pace. These trends suggest it is time to take a radical departure in the way superscalar processors are designed. In particular, the PI proposes superscalar processor design automation. This project explores challenges and solutions at key levels:

Automatic FPGA-based processor-in-system exploration Efficient and automatic ISA/microarchitecture decoupling Automatic RTL generation via a superscalar design language A low-effort physical design strategy and alternative to custom design.

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Paul Franzon, Eric Rotenberg, Rhett Davis, James Tuck, Huiyang Zhou and Steven Lipa have been awarded $4,019,617 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency  (DARPA) for research on 3D-Enabled Customizable Embedded Computer.

The award will run from September 19th, 2012 to February 14th, 2018.

Research Abstract

The proposed effort will investigate new approaches to building ultra low power computers.

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MINERvA Detector

Research that produced the world's first message sent using tiny neutrino particles - a project led in part by Dr. Daniel Stancil, head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State and Dr. Brian Hughes, professor and associate head of electrical and computer engineering at NC State - has been named among Physics World magazine's top 10 breakthroughs for 2012.

Earlier this year, the team of researchers successfully sent a beam of neutrinos through 240 meters of earth with a message in binary code that read, "neutrino." The communication marked the first time information had been transmitted with the particles, which can pass through almost anything because they have no electrical charge and very little mass.

The story was featured on the Physics World website in March. The magazine made its selections from a pool of more than 350 news articles about advances in the physical sciences published on its site in 2012.

Neutrinos have long held promise for communications. As the Physics World story notes: "For ease of transmission through any material, nothing beats the neutrino. The ghostly particle is affected only by the weak nuclear force and, very faintly, by gravity. As a result, it can pass through almost everything and interacts with virtually nothing."

But, the story says, one problem makes neutrino-based messaging difficult.

"Although neutrino-based systems have been proposed since the 1970s, they have all come up against the same problem: how to detect the neutrinos at the receiving end when the vast majority of the particles will pass straight through any detector. To detect enough neutrinos to transmit information at a reasonable rate, either an extremely intense neutrino source or a very large detector (or both) would be needed."

 
Dr. Daniel Stancil (L) & Dr. Brian Hughes (R)

About three years ago, the story continues, Dr. Stancil, was thinking about possibilities for communicating using axions - hypothetical particles that pique researchers' interest because they might be part of dark matter. From a communications perspective, axions are interesting because, if they exist, they could pass through any material. A former student pointed out that the concept could be tested with neutrinos at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab (FermiLab) outside of Chicago, where researchers were conducting a neutrino scattering experiment called MINERvA.

Physicists with the experiment agreed to collaborate with the engineers, so the lab's high-energy neutrino beam and multi-ton MINERvA detector were employed to send and receive the word "neutrino," which was spelled out in binary code as 1's and 0's.

Given the huge amount of technological muscle needed to send and receive one word, neutrinos won't be carrying messages for millions of people anytime soon. But the work does open up possibilities for future advances, including sending messages through the center of the earth and inter-stellar communications.

The team also included engineers from the NASA Glenn Research Center.

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North Carolina State University will lead a national nanotechnology research effort to create self-powered devices to help people monitor their health and understand how the surrounding environment affects it, the National Science Foundation announced today.

The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST), to be headquartered on NC State's Centennial Campus, is a joint effort between NC State and partner institutions Florida International University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Virginia. The center, funded by an initial five-year $18.5 million grant from NSF, also includes five affiliated universities and about 30 industry partners in its global research consortium.

"Tackling the world's grand challenges is one of NC State's strategic imperatives," said NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson. "The ASSIST center holds the potential to transform health care, leading to advanced environmental health research and enhanced environmental policy."

With the addition of ASSIST, NC State is the only university in the country currently leading two active NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs), among the largest and most prestigious grants made by the engineering directorate of the federal agency. The FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid ERC formed in 2008, is also headquartered at NC State.

ASSIST researchers will use the tiniest of materials to develop self-powered health monitoring sensors and devices. These devices could be worn on the chest like a patch, on the wrist like a watch, as a cap that fits over a tooth, or in other ways, depending on the biological system that's being monitored.

Wireless health monitoring is already a fast-growing industry, but the self-powered technology being developed by ASSIST means that changing and recharging batteries on current devices could soon be a thing of the past. By using nanomaterials and nanostructures - a nanowire is thousands of times thinner than a human hair - and thermoelectric and piezoelectric materials that use body heat and motion, respectively, as power sources, ASSIST researchers want to make devices that operate on the smallest amounts of energy.

 
Dr. Veena Misra and Dr. John Muth provide leadership for ASSIST.

"Currently there are many devices out there that monitor health in different ways," said Dr. Veena Misra, the center's director and professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State. "What's unique about our technologies is the fact that they are powered by the human body, so they don't require battery charging."

These devices could transform health care by improving the way doctors, patients and researchers gather and interpret important health data. Armed with uninterrupted streams of heart rate readings, respiration rates and other health indicators, as well as personalized exposure data for environmental pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide, sick people could better manage chronic diseases, and healthy people could make even better decisions to keep themselves fit.

On a larger scale, data gleaned from research studies employing these devices could prove invaluable to lawmakers crafting environmental policy. And if people using the devices make better decisions about where and how healthfully they live, national health care costs, which topped $2.5 trillion in 2010, could come down.

The center's headquarters will be housed in the Larry K. Monteith Engineering Research Center on NC State's Centennial Campus. There, ASSIST researchers will develop thermoelectric materials that harvest body heat and new nanosensors that gather health information from the body such as heart rates, oxygen levels and respiration data. In addition, the researchers will find ways to package the technology developed by the center into wearable devices.

The center's partner institutions will also play important research roles. At Penn State, researchers will create new piezoelectric materials and energy-efficient transistors. The team from the University of Virginia will develop ways to make the systems work on very small amounts of power, while the group from Florida International University will create sensors that gather biochemical signals from the body, such as stress levels.

The results of that work, coupled with low-power radios developed by the University of Michigan, will be used to process and transmit health data gathered by the sensors to computers and consumer devices, such as cell phones, so patients, doctors and researchers can easily digest it. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will provide ASSIST with medical guidance and arrange testing of the center's technology.

 
ASSIST aims to produce self-powered health-monitoring devices, some of which could be worn on the wrist.

"We have assembled a comprehensive team that works together closely under a systems-driven approach to tackle this challenging set of global health problems," Misra said.

ASSIST also has foreign partnerships with the University of Adelaide, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

"The research conducted at ASSIST will help patients, doctors and scientists make direct correlations between a person's health and the surrounding environment, leading to better prediction and treatment of chronic diseases," said Dr. Louis A. Martin-Vega, dean of the College of Engineering at NC State. "The fact that NC State now leads two NSF Engineering Research Centers is a testament to our world-class engineering faculty, students and facilities."

ASSIST will also draw on the expertise of industry partners to help guide the center's work to the marketplace. These partners include companies and agencies involved in nanomaterials and nanodevices, integrated chip manufacturing, software development, bioengineering and health care.

The center will feature a nanotechnology education program, including an undergraduate concentration and a graduate master's certificate, as well as a personalized professional-development program for graduate students.

The center will also partner with 11 middle and high schools in North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania to develop outreach activities that bring nanosystems engineering into K-12 classrooms. Students in partner high schools will have the chance to be involved in ASSIST research.

The five-year NSF grant for ASSIST is renewable for an additional five years and follows a two-year selection process by the federal agency. The grant is among a new group of Engineering Research Center awards that invest in nanosystems.

Dr. John Muth, professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State, will serve as the center's deputy director. The ASSIST leadership team also includes Dr. Thomas Jackson, Kirby Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State, research director and partner campus director; Dr. David Peden, senior associate dean for translational research at the UNC School of Medicine, medical director; Dr. Benton Calhoun, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Virginia, partner campus director; Dr. Shekhar Bhansali, Alcatel-Lucent Professor and head of electrical and computer engineering at Florida International University, partner campus director; Dr. Mehmet Ozturk, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the NC State Nanofabrication Facility, education and diversity director; Dr. Gail Jones, professor of science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in NC State's College of Education, pre-college education director; and Dr. Ted Baker, associate professor of management, innovation and entrepreneurship in NC State's Poole College of Management, industry collaboration and innovation director.

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Dr. Griff Bilbro

Dr. Grif Bilbro has been awarded $300,000 by the Triquint Semiconductor, Inc. for research on Modeling TriQuint devices for DARPA MPC.

The award will run from December 21st, 2011 to December 31st, 2012.

Research Abstract

NCSU will model AlGaN/GaN HFETs for TriQuint under the MPC/DARPA effort over the next 2 or 3 years.

Twice a year, NCSU will develop a time domain model of TriQuint's current GaN FETs,  validate it against TriQuint characterizations of devices, then simulate the operation. There are three devices in each interation, a depletion mode logic device, an enhancement mode logic device, and a RF switch. Quantities of interest include  Ron, Roff, propagation delay and transition energy for the E/D logic, and off-state reactance.

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Rajib Mikail

Rajib Mikail, a 5th year doctoral student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University, won 2nd place in the 8th Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium. The symposium was held on March 19 at the McKimmon Center and was open to any graduate student from NC State. This year's symposium featured over 200 posters.

Mikail is a part of the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Center and is being advised by Dr. Iqbal Husain.

This research project was funded by Nexteer Automotive, Saginaw, MI.

Rajib's research was on "Switched Reluctance Machine (SRM) for Electric Power Steering Application".

 
Rajib Mikail's Poster

Abstract: Power steering creates the necessary torque assist for the driver while rotating the steering wheel. Electric motor is recently used in power steering for better steering feel. To meet the torque ripple and noise level according to the standard specification is a challenging step for power steering system design. Non-permanent magnet machines are the key focus of researchers and industries due to the cost and availability issues of rare earth permanent magnet. SRM is the only non-permanent magnet machine which is highly reliable and inherently fault tolerant for steering application. With the current design and control technology, SRM has unsuitable torque ripple and acoustic noise for steering application. In this project the machine was redesigned and a new controller algorithm is proposed and implemented experimentally to achieve the required torque ripple and noise performance. A novel current profiling approach covering the speed range of operation is proposed. In addition to the current profiling method a predictive current control method is analyzed to follow the current profiles with minimum error and desired switching frequency. With the achieved improvement SRM can be used on other torque ripple sensitive high performance applications.

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Megan Matthews (L), Dr. Cranos Williams (R)

Megan Leigh Matthews, an ECE Master's student under Dr. Cranos Williams, has been awarded the Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity (IMSD) Doctoral Research Assistantship.

The IMSD program is an initiative at NC State whose focus is to increase in a meaningful way the number of students from underrepresented groups receiving doctoral degrees and entering into the professoriate in bio-related disciplines (e.g. Biochemistry, Biomedical Engineering, Genetics, and Plant Biology). This program is funded through the National Institute of Health.

The assistantship will be awarded starting August 2012 where Megan will continue into the Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering under Dr. Williams.  Megan will focus on applying mathematical modeling techniques and control systems theory to understanding how environmental stressors such as drought, elevated temperature, salinity, and elevated CO2 concentrations impact lignin, cellulose, and other useful compounds generated by plant systems. This multi-disciplinary research topic combines the fields of electrical engineering, systems theory, plant biology, and mathematics.

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Dr. Subhashish Bhattacharya

Dr. Subhashish Bhattacharya has been awarded $234,444 by the GE Global Research for research on Resilient Multiterminal HVDC Using High Voltage High Frequency Electronics Capability.

The award will run from April 4th, 2012 to January 22nd, 2015.

Research Abstract

GE Global Research in collaboration with North Carolina State University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute proposes a resilient multi-terminal current-link based HVDC transmission technology, to enable dynamic routing of electric power with high efficiency and reliability. The proposed technology is modular which allows system scalability to achieve any voltage and power rating. Each module is based on a high-voltage high-frequency power conversion topology in which the galvanic isolation is achieved by a high-frequency (20-50kHz) step-up transformer. Hence, the low-frequency grid side transformer is eliminated which results significant reduction in the system footprint. Due to current-link based power transmission, the proposed technology is naturally fault tolerant and hence it is suitable for multi-terminal HVDC system.

The nature of the proposed work includes both proof of concept and early stage device prototyping categories.

Following tasks will be executed to satisfy the technical performance targets of the proposed technology:

Circuit level analysis, design and control of the module Steady-state and dynamic analysis of the system Real-time demonstration of the system based on a commercial RTDS platform Experimental prototype and demonstration of a three terminal, 10kV, 100kW each, multi-terminal HVDC network Demonstration of fault modes and fail-safe operation

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Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty (L) with one of his students

NC State University has received a $200K research grant from the US Department of Energy to advance its ongoing research and education in wide-area monitoring and control of power systems using Synchronized Phasor Measurements (or "Synchrophasors"). Synchrophasors are high-resolution measurements of the currents and voltages of large power systems that capture detailed oscillations of the power flows in different parts of the grid -- particularly useful to analyze critical disturbances such as a blackout. The devices that measure Synchrophasors are called Phasor Measurement Units (PMU). In this project, NC State researchers will use Synchrophasor data -- provided by our local utility company Duke Energy as well as a long-standing collaborator, Southern California Edison -- to create reliable power system models by which critical disturbances such as blackouts can be predicted and controlled.

The two-year project is headed by Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty, Assistant Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering, together with co-investigators Dr. Mesut Baran, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Dr. Pam Carpenter, MS-EPSE Education Program Manager.

Over the past one year, Chakrabortty and his research group have developed a hardware-in-loop laboratory infrastructure using multiple PMUs integrated with a Real-time Digital Simulator (RTDS), housed at the FREEDM Systems Center. The RTDS is a supercomputer that can simulate large and complicated power system models in almost real-time. This facility will now be extended to create a multi-port, multi-user, and multi-vendor network of PMUs spread across the three campuses of NC State, Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill through an existing metro-scale fiber optic communication network called the Breakable Experimental Network (BEN), hosted by the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). This PMU network will allow multiple users at various points of the network to process and communicate PMU data between each other, and collaboratively use them for critical applications such as power oscillation monitoring, distributed state estimation and, most importantly, distributed control. For example, local users in this PMU network may access artificial PMU data generated by RTDS simulations in real-time, run their individual local algorithms using these data, and then communicate the results to neighboring users until the control-loop reaches a global consensus over time. The project will also study the sensitivity of these distributed control algorithms on network latencies, data loss, and malicious attacks by hackers. Chakrabortty and his team will collaborate with local utility company Duke Energy as well as with longstanding collaborator Southern California Edison, ABB, and RENCI to realize this network testbed.

 
Diagram

The Renaissance Computing Institute at North Carolina State University opened in early 2007 and supports the use of visualization technology and analytical methods to explore engineering, scientific, design and educational challenges. The site focuses primarily on serving the NCSU community, its partners and collaborators.

The Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Center, headquartered on NC State University's Centennial Campus, is one of the latest Gen-III Engineering Research Center (ERC) established by National Science Foundation in 2008. The FREEDM Systems Center will partner with universities, industry and national laboratories in 28 states and nine countries to develop technology to revolutionize the nation's power grid and speed renewable electric-energy technologies into every home and business.

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Cyborg Insect Networks for Exploration and Mapping

Alper Bozkurt, Edgar Lobaton and Mihail Sichitiu have been awarded $880,000 by the National Science Foundation Cyber-Physical Systems Program for their research on "CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Cyborg Insect Networks for Exploration and Mapping (CINEMa)". The total award amount is $1,000,000 as an additional award of $120,000 was granted to Ty Hedrick at UNC-Chapel Hill Biology Department as a part of this research effort. The award will run from October 1st, 2012 to September 30th, 2015.

Research Abstract

Autonomous navigation in unknown and dynamic environments has been a major challenge for synthetic mobile robotic agents. On the other hand, insects can easily solve such complex navigational problems and demonstrate remarkably stable and optimized locomotion skills in almost any environment. This project aims to develop a mobile sensor network where insects are used as mobile biological-robotic (biobotic) nodes. Insects, in fact, build a "natural" sensor network through the use of their biological sensing organs and release of chemical, mechanical and optical cues to communicate the information to the rest of the group. In the scope of this project, a novel cyber-physical communication network will be established among the individual insect in addition to the aforementioned natural one. For this, insects will be equipped with synthetic electronic sensors to sense additional cues, neuromuscular stimulation systems to direct the control of the insect and microcontrollers with radios to establish an RF link between the insects. This novel network will enable operation of insect biobots in complicated and uncertain dynamic environments for applications such as environmental sensing and search-and-rescue operations after natural disasters.

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