C²M² would like to thank Dr. Richard R. Brooks, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University, for taking part in our C²M² Distinguished Speaker Series on September 18th, 2020.

Seminar Title

Autonomous Systems Need to be Designed using Game Theory

Seminar Abstract

In designing an autonomous system there are two possible approaches: (1) create a model of how everything is expected to work, use that for design and implementation, and hope for the best, or (2) assume that things will break, that some portions of the system will be unpredictable, and assume that some participants will try to game the system for their own advantage. This talk takes the second approach.
     It builds on over 20 years of research funded by DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, OSD, NIST, US State Dept., NSF, and industry. We consider autonomy in combat systems and automotive applications. The case is made that control systems in these environments need to anticipate, and plan for, actions by others that counter the control systems’ goals. Examples are given that range from air combat in Bosnia to driving on highways.

Speaker Bio

R.R. Brooks is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and a B.A. in Mathematical Sciences from The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Brooks also studied Operations Research at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris, France.
He is a senior member of the IEEE. He wrote the books Disruptive Security Technologies with Mobile Code and Peer-to-Peer Networks and Introduction to Computer and Network Security: Navigating Shades of Gray and co-wrote Multi-Sensor Fusion. He co-edited both versions of Distributed Sensor Networks (with S. S. Iyengar).
Dr. Brooks’ security research funded by the US Department of State developed secure communications tools being used by activists and journalists avoiding repression by authoritarian regimes. He created tools for both exploiting and foiling side-channel attacks.  His team has performed professional penetration testing for clients. The security research of his group is particularly tailored towards networks of embedded systems.
Dr. Brooks was PI of the Reactive Sensor Networks Project sponsored by the DARPA ITO Sensor Information Technology initiative, which explored collaborative signal processing to aggregate information moving through the network, and the use of mobile code for coordination among intelligent sensor nodes.  Dr. Brooks was co-PI of a DARPA IXO JFACC program that used distributed discrete event controllers for air combat C2 planning. He coordinated a DARPA MURI program that uses cooperating automata in a cellular space to coordinate sensor network planning and execution.
Dr. Brooks was PI of an ONR URI on cybersecurity issues relating to mobile code and the construction of secure information infrastructures.  Dr. Brooks’ research on computer and network security has been sponsored by ONR, DARPA, ARO, AFOSR, NIST, US Department of State, NSF, the US Department of State, and BMW Manufacturing Corporation.
His Ph. D. dissertation received an exemplary achievement certificate from the Louisiana State University graduate school. Dr. Brooks is an Associate  Editor of Elsevier Computers and Security. He has a broad professional background with computer systems and networks. Dr. Brooks was head of the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory Distributed Systems Department for over six years. He was the technical director of Radio Free Europe’s computer network for many years. His consulting clients include the French stock exchange authority and the World Bank.

Dr. Mashrur “Ronnie” Chowdhury, our Center Director, is collaborating with our partner institutions–Benedict College, The Citadel, South Carolina State University, and the University of South Carolina–on artificial intelligence (AI) research using quantum computers. The goal is to improve future mobility through quantum machine learning algorithms. Benedict College has dedicated a lab for this where our students will be working supervised by the PIs of our consortium members. C²M² is working towards establishing quantum labs at each of our partner institutions.

Quantum computing is an emerging research field. The idea started in the early 1980s. Since then, quantum algorithms have been making progress in parallel with the development of quantum computers. However, there are several obstacles to leveraging quantum computing’s full benefits, which need to be overcome through research. Some of the obstacles include physical design (e.g., fabrication, verification, architecture), scalability, decoherence or loss of information, error correction, and random qubit initialization. Moreover, new machine learning algorithms need to be developed for leveraging the full potential of quantum computers.

Theoretically, quantum algorithms can achieve quadratic speedup compared to classical algorithms. This is important for time-critical applications that require a significant computational resource. An emerging area of quantum computing research is quantum machine learning, which refers to the development of hybrid machine learning methods that involve both classical and quantum processing. The current research goal is to make quantum computers and quantum algorithms widespread so that they can be utilized in time-critical and safety-critical applications that require significantly faster computation which cannot be done through existing classical computers.

Although Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) communication can significantly improve pedestrian safety at a signalized intersection, this safety is hindered when pedestrians do not carry hand-held devices (e.g., Dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) and 5G enabled cell phone) to communicate with connected vehicles nearby. To overcome this limitation, in this project, traffic cameras at a signalized intersection were used to accurately detect and locate pedestrians via a vision-based deep learning technique to generate safety alerts in real-time about possible conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians. The contribution of this project lies in the development of a system using a vision-based deep learning model that is able to generate personal safety messages (PSMs) in real-time (every 100 milliseconds). We develop a pedestrian alert safety system (PASS) to generate a safety alert of an imminent pedestrian-vehicle crash using generated PSMs to improve pedestrian safety at a signalized intersection. Our approach estimates the location and velocity of a pedestrian more accurately than existing DSRC-enabled pedestrian hand-held devices. A connected vehicle application, the Pedestrian in Signalized Crosswalk Warning (PSCW), was developed to evaluate the vision-based PASS. Numerical analyses show that our vision-based PASS is able to satisfy the accuracy and latency requirements of pedestrian safety applications in a connected vehicle environment.

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C²M² would like to thank James H. Lambert, Director, Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems Site Director, NSF I/UCRC Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust, University of Virginia, for joining us as a part of our C²M² Distinguished Speaker Series, August 12, 2020. 

Seminar Title

Resilience of Advanced Logistics Systems with Emergent and Future Conditions

Seminar Abstract

This talk explores how risk and resilience analysis of engineering systems address disruptive combinations of emergent and future conditions, with an emphasis on the influence of human values to priorities for advanced logistics systems. The conditions span technologies, regulations, economics, markets, resources, population behaviors, workforce behaviors, environments, missions, organizations, health, etc. The conditions influence priorities across R&D investments, time horizons, locations, policies, projects, assets, products, services, etc. The approach involves multidisciplinary expertise from engineering, law, business, ethics, cybersecurity, survey research, etc. The methods include scenario-based preferences, multicriteria optimization, corridor and network trace analysis, human factors and ergonomics, environmental and social justice and equity, mathematical modeling and simulation, and others. Several applications are described, including alternative-energy vehicles; charging of fleet electric vehicles; risk registers and other human-machine interface technologies; airport runway safety; and maritime commerce with autonomous vehicles. 

Bio

Professor Lambert’s interests are engineering systems and risk analysis, with application to (i) advanced mobile grid services and network of chargers of fleet electric vehicles, (ii) enterprise resilience of national wireless broadband network in public safety, (iii) simulation of operations and strategic priorities of maritime container ports, (iv) logistics and industrial supply chains for aviation biofuels, (v) risk management of economic development to infrastructure corridors, (vi) population behaviors and community resilience in radiological and other disasters, (vii) transportation strategic plans influenced by climate combining with emergent and future conditions, (viii) priority setting for airports with risk of runway incursions, and (ix) security of critical infrastructure systems related to embedded hardware devices. He is a Professor of Engineering Systems and Environment (Program in Systems Engineering, Program in Civil Engineering), Director of the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, and Member of the Technical Advisory Council of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Logistics Systems, each at the University of Virginia. He is Chair of the Fifth World Congress on Risk (Cape Town, South Africa, 2019), a Past President (2015-2016) of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), and Chair of the SRA Annual Meeting with over 800 registered participants (Washington DC, 2015). He is a Fellow of the IEEE (F.IEEE), Fellow of the ASCE (F.ASCE), Fellow of the SRA (F.SRA), Diplomate (D.WRE) of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers, member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the International Council on Systems Engineering, and licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal Environment Systems & Decisions. He is Area Editor of the Wiley journal Risk Analysis. He is Associate Editor of the ASCE/ASME Journal of Risk & Uncertainty in Engineering Systems. His publications appear in the above journals and Wiley journal Risk Analysis, Elsevier journal Reliability Engineering and System Safety, ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, Military Operations Research Society Journal, IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics, Elsevier journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, et al.  He received a Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil Engineering at the University of Virginia, and a B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering with a Certificate in Engineering Physics at Princeton University.

June 22-26, 2020, Dr. Michalaka taught a “Tour of Engineering” virtual summer camp organized by the South Carolina Governor’s School of Science and Mathematics (SCGSSM). Sixteen rising 8^th and 9^th graders participated and learned about what engineers do, types of engineering, necessary skills to be successful, civil engineering, transportation engineering, mechanical engineering, computer/software engineering, sustainability, and others. The camp included lecture time and hands-on work sessions. Students worked on exercises like developing a safely returning to school protocol, designing a classroom that allows social distancing, designing a bridge using Bridge Designer software, building one bridge using office material and one with edible material, outlining their neighborhood streets and transforming them to complete streets (streets for all) using Streetmix, designing and building a safety collision device, designing a phone application for school zones and others. In all activities, students used the engineering design process to brainstorm, build, and improve their ideas. The camp also included activities such as Kahoot quizzes, guest lectures, short videos, and presentations.

C²M² would like to thank Mashrur “Ronnie” Chowdhury, Eugene Douglas Mays Professor, Clemson University, for taking part in our C²M² Distinguished Speaker Series on Thursday, August 27th, at 2:00pm.

Public Digital Infrastructure Deployment for Future Mobility

Seminar Abstract

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) can potentially improve roadway safety and mobility, and can help reduce the negative environmental impacts of surface transportation systems. However, the realization of these benefits largely depends on the integration of digital technology into the existing transportation infrastructure to support CAV operations in a cyber-physical system environment. This presentation focuses on the importance of investments in digital infrastructure on public roads alongside investments in traditional transportation infrastructure to keep up with private industry’s push towards CAVs. In addition, this presentation will highlight lessons learned from the real-world deployment of public digital infrastructure for evolving CAVs in the South Carolina Connected Vehicle Testbed (SC-CVT).

Speaker Bio

Dr. Chowdhury is the Eugene Douglas Mays Professor of Transportation in the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering at Clemson University. He is also a professor in the Department of Automotive Engineering and Division of Computer Science at the School of Computing. Dr. Chowdhury is the founding Director of the USDOT Center for Connected Multimodal Mobility (C²M² ) (https://cecas.clemson.edu/C2M2/). He is co-director of the Complex Systems, Analytics and Visualization Institute (CSAVI) (www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/csavi/). His research experience includes transportation cyber-physical systems security, navigation of connected and automated vehicles through in-vehicle sensors and external connectivity with digital infrastructure, heterogeneous wireless communication for security, distributed machine learning on the edges, and other edge computing applications, and safety risk analysis for autonomous vehicle operations in a mixed traffic stream.

Dr. Chowdhury has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers, 85 peer-reviewed conference proceedings paper, four textbooks, nine book chapters, and seven research articles in widely circulated professional magazines. He has developed multiple software for connected and automated vehicles (e.g., AutoNavi, CVDeP, CVGuard, PSMGen, and POSH). His leadership in smart city research and development is evident by his close industry and public agency collaborations.  He is an alumnus of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Frontiers of Engineering program. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems.  He is a fellow of ASCE. He is a senior member of IEEE.  

C²M² would like to thank Kara Kockelman, Ph.D, University of Texas, Austin, for taking part in our C²M² Distinguished Speaker Series. Her talk on July 10th, 2020 was well received and can be found in its entirety on our Youtube channel and the webinar section of our website.

Seminar Title

Shifting toward Shared Fleets & Shared Rides, via Autonomous Vehicles & Congestion Pricing

Seminar Abstract:

Connected and (fully-) automated vehicles (CAVs) are set to disrupt the ways in which we travel, and result in more motorized trips and longer trips. Shared AVs (SAVs) will offer many people access to such technologies at relatively low cost (e.g., $1 per mile), with empty-vehicle travel on the order of 10 to 15 percent of fleet VMT. If SAVs are smaller and/or electric, and dynamic ride-sharing is enabled and regularly used, emissions and energy demand may fall. If road tolls are thoughtfully applied, using GPS-based systems along with all congested network segments, total VMT may not rise: instead, travel times – and their unreliability – may fall. If credit-based congestion pricing is used, traveler welfare can rise and transportation systems may operate near-optimally. This presentation will present research relating to all these topics, including the benefits of SAV stop aggregation.

C²M² invites you to join us in welcoming Kara Kockelman, University of Texas, Ausitn, as a part of our C²M² Distinguished Speaker Series. Dr. Kara Kockelman is a registered professional engineer and holds a Ph.D., MS, and BS in civil engineering, a master’s of city planning, and a minor in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. She has been a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas at Austin for 22 years and is a primary and co-author of over 160 journal articles (and two books) across a variety of subjects, nearly all of which involve transportation-related data analysis. Her primary research interests include planning for electric, shared and autonomous vehicle systems, the statistical modeling of urban systems (including models of travel behavior, trade, and location choice), energy and climate issues (vis-à-vis transport and land use decisions), the economic impacts of transport policy, and crash occurrence and consequences. Pre-prints of these papers & more details can be found at https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/home.html.

C²M² would like to thank Mitch Shue, Professor of Practice, Clemson School of Computing, for taking part in our C²M² Distinguished Speaker Series. His talk on July 2nd, 2020 was well received and can be found in its entirety on our Youtube channel and the webinar section of our website.

Seminar Abstract

Cloud computing has become a hot topic across virtually all industries. There are many misconceptions about cloud computing and questions about its suitability for certain types of applications. Join Clemson University’s Mitch Shue, Professor of Practice in the School of Computing and former CTO of Morningstar to learn about:

· What cloud computing is

· The current state of the cloud computing market

· How it is different from traditional computing models

· Cloud computing reliability, security, and performance

· Its suitability for real-time applications like those supporting connected mobility

Bio

Mitch Shue is a professor of practice in the School of Computing at Clemson University, leaving a long career in industry to join the faculty in 2019.

Mitch Shue is a professor of practice in the School of Computing at Clemson University, leaving a long career in industry to join the faculty in 2019.

Prior to Clemson, Professor Shue served as chief technology officer for Morningstar (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading global provider of independent investment research and data, and was responsible for the company’s technology vision and execution strategy.

Previously, he was chief technology officer for HelloWallet, a company that specialized in web and mobile financial wellness programs, which Morningstar acquired in 2014. Professor Shue previously held leadership roles with Centrifuge Systems, webs.com, webMethods, and Transaction Network Services. He has helped grow three startups into strong publicly traded companies, and two others into successful acquisitions.

Professor Shue holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Trinity University in Texas and a master’s degree in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University in Virginia.  

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• Technology Transfer Report
• Report Data

In 2015, South Carolina ranked third in the nation in pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 population. Out of 979 total motor vehicle fatalities, 123 involved pedestrians, accounting for over 12% of all road user fatalities in South Carolina. While some individuals make conscious choices to walk and dwell in transit-oriented or mixed-use walkable communities, for others, vehicle availability or physical disability may dictate the pedestrian mode.  Thus, pedestrian crashes and resulting deaths and injuries can disproportionately affect these segments of the population. Often, these crashes occur due to driver detection errors, such as: 1) inability to identify specific types of road users or looking at the direction that is appropriate due to the gap of cognitive expectation; and 2) failure in understanding stimuli when adequate lighting is not available or when a vehicle approaches in the periphery of the visual field for the road user. Historically, pedestrian detection has been the responsibility of the driver and is prone to errors related to expectation, visual acuity, visual contrast, etc.  With the growing market of vehicle sensing, smartphones, and smart infrastructure, there exists a plethora of opportunities to aid the driver and pedestrian with enhanced sensing capability and visibility. This research lays the foundation of knowledge for pedestrian midblock crashes at nighttime, their exposure characteristics, and the potential effectiveness of existing sensing technologies.  Through data analytics, this research advances knowledge for technology adoption to foster safer and more effective mobility for our society.

• Final Report
• Technology Transfer Report
• Report Data