| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 15, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | October 20, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 2016717 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Marilyn McClure
mmcclure@nsf.gov (703)292-5197 CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Direct For Computer & Info Scie & Enginr |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2020 |
| End Date: | March 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $100,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $100,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1 UTSA CIR SAN ANTONIO TX US 78249-1644 (210)458-4340 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
TX US 78249-1644 |
| Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | CSR-Computer Systems Research |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Single-rider micromobility vehicles, such as dock-less battery-powered e-scooters, are a fast-growing and popular short-distance transportation mechanism in our urban communities. This upcoming transportation paradigm not only provides new research opportunities in Computer and Information Science & Engineering (CISE) focused areas of large-scale data management, computer hardware/software systems design, cyber security and user-privacy, but also serves as an excellent instrument to collect contextual data that could enable research in a variety of other CISE and multi-disciplinary areas such as machine learning, high performance computing, urban planning, transportation engineering and public policy. However, currently a large-scale, easily customizable, and publicly-accessible research instrument comprising of micromobility vehicles to support these opportunities is unavailable, which hinders scientific advances in these areas. The goal of this project is to plan for the creation and eventual deployment of such a community infrastructure - a testbed referred to as ScooterLab. The ScooterLab testbed involves retrofitting off-the-shelf micromobility vehicles with customized sensors and controller computers and developing a management portal to support inter-disciplinary research collaborations. It will be available to community researchers for deployment of customized sensing experiments and trials of new algorithms/systems. Carefully curated datasets from these experiments and trials will be publicly-available and will enable new, ground-breaking research breakthroughs in CISE and other multi-disciplinary domains.
This CISE Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) planning project will make the following key contributions: (1) reach out to CISE and other inter-disciplinary communities focusing on micromobility research in order to further understand the requirements of researchers within this space, (2) implement proof-of-concept vehicles for the planned testbed and continuously improve the design of these preliminary prototypes based on community feedback, and (3) organize focused workshops and tutorials to update the community about these preliminary vehicle designs, testbed deployment plans and related research goals. This planning project is a necessary step towards implementation of the ScooterLab community testbed, which can prevent time-consuming and expensive duplication of research testbeds that are not shared with others. The outreach activities of this project and the planned ScooterLab testbed will provide opportunities for attracting and sustaining faculty and students working on intelligent micromobility solutions and transportation systems, and will bring together researchers from computer science, electrical engineering, urban planning, and public policy for inter-disciplinary research in this emerging area. The testbed will also be a foundational instrument for University of Texas at San Antonio?s (UTSA) planned Urban Science Institute, which is part of the ten-year plan for the Downtown campus. As a minority-serving institution (56% Hispanic and 51% Female), UTSA as a home for this testbed will provide extensive research and participation opportunities for people of color and women.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This grant planned for the development of a micromobility research testing platform called ScooterLab to support researchers’ needs across various Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE) fields. ScooterLab aims to become a large-scale research testbed, including a highly customizable fleet of micromobility vehicles, such as dockless e-scooters, equipped with advanced sensing equipment depending on the specific study requirements of community researchers. This testbed will serve as a state-of-the-art crowd-sensing platform, operating within and around the campuses of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). It will enable collection of high-precision urban and transportation data for addressing multi-disciplinary research challenges in areas such as mobile sensing, machine learning/AI, computer vision, transportation systems, urban planning, high-performance computing, big data analytics, cybersecurity and privacy, and mobility modeling. In line with the above overarching goal, this planning grant accomplished the following three objectives:
1) Build a research community around ScooterLab: To ensure the development of a research infrastructure that has broad applicability and adoption among multiple stakeholders, the project explored the precise needs and requirements of the different CISE and multi-disciplinary research communities using two community events/workshops. These workshops, organized in 2020 and 2021 in a virtual/online fashion (due to COVID-related restrictions), were attended by a large and diverse group of national and international researchers interested in employing the ScooterLab testbed for their research. These workshops updated the research community on the planned design and development of the ScooterLab infrastructure (including technical and operational details) and sought feedback for developing the testbed. Carefully planned breakout sessions identified significant obstacles and opportunities that could arise during the development, deployment, sharing, and usage of ScooterLab.
Two reports detailing the workshop organization and its outcomes were completed and published online for the community for further feedback. A publicly accessible website, https://scooterlab.utsa.edu, was created to serve as the primary interface for the community to interact with the ScooterLab team and for obtaining periodic updates, workshop/meeting reports, design/operation plans, and technical documentation/manuals.
2) Develop ScooterLab vehicle prototypes: Two prototypes were created using commercial scooters and integrated with additional hardware and software for data collection and control. The prototypes, code-named SLP1 and SLP2, serve as technology demonstrators of the micromobility vehicles planned to be deployed as part of the eventual ScooterLab fleet. In SLP1, a commercially available Segway Ninebot ES2 was integrated with a wireless base station computer (WBSC) comprising of a Raspberry Pi model B+. This WBSC was programmed to both control the scooter operation as well as sense ambient data through a variety of integrated and externally connected sensors. In SLP2, the WBSC featured a OnePlus Nord N200 Android Smartphone enclosed within a robust, waterproof 3D-printed enclosure.
The prototypes were tested extensively and used for cost estimation and planning. Testing included validating the operation and robustness of the various integrated sensing and control components. This exercise also supported more accurate estimates of resources and costs, which helped plan the implementation of an entire fleet later for the proposed testbed. These early prototype designs, and some preliminary data collected using these prototypes, were also shared with the research community during the engagement workshops to solicit their feedback.
3) Prepare a new proposal to NSF under the CCRI: New grant category: This planning project served as a robust platform for ScooterLab's core research team to develop and submit a CCRI: New proposal to NSF to develop, deploy, and manage the complete ScooterLab testbed and make it available to the CISE and other multi-disciplinary research communities. The research team accomplished significant community outreach and institutional engagement as part of this proposal development process. For instance, the project team individually reached out to several researchers who had attended the earlier ScooterLab workshops/community engagement events to understand further how ScooterLab would enable their current and future research projects. Additionally, the team wanted to understand the service expectations of researchers once the testbed is deployed. The project team also worked with the UTSA Office of Risk Management and UTSA Office of Legal Affairs teams to understand the risks to ScooterLab participants and potential liability to the university, exploring approaches to mitigate these challenges.
Broader Impacts:
This project offered valuable insights into the research community's needs related to micromobility and data collection and provided research and professional training opportunities for graduate students. The two ScooterLab community workshops highlighted several technical and other challenges in the development, deployment, sharing, and usage of the planned community research infrastructure. The project also provided invaluable training and professional development opportunities to two graduate students, one majoring in Computer Science while the other majoring in Urban and Regional Planning. By participating in this project, these students gained expertise in new and upcoming technical/research areas such as planning and operation of shared micromobility systems, mobile and embedded systems programming, and assembling complex cyber-physical and mobile sensing systems.
Last Modified: 06/06/2023
Modified by: Murtuza S Jadliwala
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