COSC 4397/6397 - Cyber-physical Systems

Fall 2012

T 4-7pm

Instructors Omprakash Gnawali,
Larry Shi, and
Nikolaos V. Tsekos.
Office HoursT 3-4pm
TAJunmo An (jman @ cs . uh . edu)
TA Office HoursTBD

Overview

In the Cyber-Physical Systems course the students learn to integrate various computational, sensing, actuation, and networking elements to design and implement a complete cyber-physical system. The students will get familiar with several embedded systems platforms, basic sensor and actuator integration into computation and networking modules and basic data analysis. The primary objective will be a development project, pursued individually or in groups. The project will be presented and evaluated at a demo day. The students should have strong programming experience in at least one programming language and knowledge or desire to learn building and integrating hardware. Although not required, it is also helpful to have basic knowledge about digital or analog electronics.

Topics

  • Digital electronics
  • Embedded systems programming
  • Sensor and Actuator integration
  • Wireless Networks
  • Sensor data processing
  • Actuator control logic
  • Displays
  • Robotics

Project

In this class, we will spend most of our time developing an application. We expect that most projects will include at least three of the following categories: sensing, actuation, networking, and computation. We encourage the students to think of novel ways in which we can integrate computation and sensing into the environment to make our lives more fun, healthy, interesting, energy-efficient, safe, and more social.

Course Resources

There is no required textbook. We will provide an array of measurement devices to debug our application.

Pre-requisites

We expect the students to be proficient in at least one programming language. Depending on the project, it is likely that you will spend at least a part of the time doing low level programming in C. Most projects might also require familiarity with Linux environment. It is helpful to know about basic electronics. We will try to cover most of what we need in the first two lectures.

Grades

Three HW30%
Project70%

Breakdown of project grades

Proposal (10%): The students identify the project either among the list suggested by the instructors or something they are interested in. The students submit a 2-page writeup with the application idea, list of hardware and software resources, work schedule, and all the unknowns. The students also do a short presentation of the proposal during the class.

Milestone 1 (10%): All the hardware and software components are identified, purchased, and the students demonstrate that they know how to use each component. Almost all the risks are eliminated by this milestone. The students submit a 1-page writeup with a list of accomplishments, remaining unknowns and work schedule. The students also present their accomplishments to date in the class.

Milestone 2 (20%): Working proof of the final project is required by this point. All the functionalities might not be working by this time, but all the integration tasks need to be complete. The students submit a 1-page writeup with a list of accomplishments, remaining unknowns, and work schedule. The students also present their accomplishments to date in the class.

Demo (20%): The students prepare a poster and present a working demo.

Report (5%): The students write a paper, not exceeding 10 pages to describe their project.

Class participation (5%): The students must actively provide feedback to other students when they present their proposals and milestones. Attendance is mandatory and will be monitored by the instructors and TAs.

Late HW or projects

We will not accept any late HW or project.

Emergencies

If you cannot submit your homework, projects or be in class for the exam due to family, personal, or medical emergencies, you must send a notice to the instructor in advance as soon as possible and document your case with the appropriate UH officials.

Academic Honesty

All the work you submit will be yours. If we find any evidence of plagarism, you will get an F in the course. Please refer to the Student Handbook for details: http://www.uh.edu/academics/catalog/policies/academ-reg/academic-honesty/.