Smart Emergency Response System (SERS) prototype was built in the SmartAmerica Challenge 2013-2014, a US government initiative. SERS has been created by a team of nine organizations led by MathWorks. The project was featured at the White House in June 2014 and described by Todd Park (U.S. Chief Technology Officer) as an exemplary achievement. I was privileged to lead this effort.
Embedded Files
Team members:
Dr. Justyna Zander, MathWorks - Team Lead
Prof. Dr. Pieter J. Mosterman, MathWorks
Dr. Yan Wan, University of North Texas
Prof. Dr. Shengli Fu, University of North Texas
Andy Chang, National Instruments
Dr. David Roberts, North Carolina State University
Dr. Alper Bozkurt, North Carolina State University
Dr. Jim Paunicka, Boeing
Prof. Dr. Howard Chizeck, University of Washington
Fredrik Ryden, BluHaptics
Kevin Huang, University of Washington
Prof. Dr. Taskin Padir, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Dr. Yosuke Bando, MIT Media Lab
Dr. Daniel Dubois, MIT Media Lab
Dr. Konosuke Watanabe, MIT Media Lab
Team member organizations:
BluHaptics
Boeing
MathWorks - Team Lead
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab
National Instruments
North Carolina State University
University of North Texas
University of Washington
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Press coverage:
August 2014
July 2014
SCS Newsletter
June 2014
May 2014
Cyber-Physical Systems links:
SERS software manual - textual
SERS software manual - recording
White House, June 2014.
Scaling Up with What-If Search Engine
The SmartAmerica initiative challenges the participants to build cyber-physical systems as a glimpse of the future to save lives, create jobs, foster businesses, and improve the economy. SERS primarily saves lives. The system provides the survivors and the emergency personnel with information to locate and assist each other during a disaster. SERS allows to submit help requests to a MATLAB-based mission center connecting first responders, apps, search-and-rescue dogs, a 6-feet-tall humanoid, robots, drones, and autonomous aircraft and ground vehicles. The command and control center optimizes the available resources to serve every incoming requests and generates an action plan for the mission. The Wi-Fi network is created on the fly by the drones equipped with antennas. In addition, the autonomous rotorcrafts, planes, and ground vehicles are simulated with Simulink and visualized in a 3D environment (Google Earth) to unlock the ability to observe the operations on a mass scale.
The Smart Emergency Response System built in MATLAB and Simulink is now available for download on GitHub.
SERS is also available as SERS Apps in MATLAB in this repository.
SERS was featured in IEEE Spectrum, Science Magazine, Communications of the ACM, published in IEEE CiSE, IFAC Annual Reviews in Control, SCS, etc.
In 2013 - 2014, I was proudly representing MathWorks, Inc and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and I was leading an external team (nine organizations) and a common project on Smart Emergency Response System (SERS) featured at the White House in June 2014 as part of the SmartAmerica Challenge 2014.
A comprehensive story of SERS team can be found in the blog: here.
Two testbeds proposed to Global City Teams Challenge 2014-2015 at NIST in Washington, DC.
"Transforming On-Demand Emergency Communications with Drones" via Homeland Security Today is now out. The most recent talk is on Vimeo (November '14).
SERS Deployment progress presented at TechJam 2015, 12 – 13 February 2015 | Washington DC and to be presented at Humanitarian Technology: Science, Systems and Global Impact 2015, 12 – 14 May 2015 | Boston MA.
Related papers, posters, talks, and books:
Justyna Zander, Pieter J. Mosterman, Taskin Padir, Yan Wan, Shengli Fu, Cyber-Physical Systems to Make Emergency Response Smart, Humanitarian Technology: Science, Systems and Global Impact 2015, 12 – 14 May 2015 | Boston MA
Justyna Zander, ‘Breaking the Wall of Emergency Response‘, Invited Talk, Falling Walls Lab 2014, The International Conference on Future Breakthroughs in Science and Society, Berlin 8/9 November 2014
Justyna Zander, Pieter J. Mosterman, What-If Search Engine, Global City Teams Challenge, kick-off event, September 29-30, 2014, NIST, Washington, DC
Justyna Zander, Pieter J. Mosterman, Smart Emergency Response System, Global City Teams Challenge, kick-off event, September 29-30, 2014, NIST, Washington, DC
Justyna Zander, Wayne C. Haase, Hardware, software, and their computational interoperability for smart and effective firefighting, NFPA, Smart Firefighting Roadmap, 2014
Enes Bilgin, Pieter J. Mosterman, David Escobar Sanabria, Kun Zhang, Justyna Zander, A Heterogeneous Fleet of Vehicles for Automated Humanitarian Missions, INFORMS Annual Meeting, Bridging Data and Decisions, November 2014
Pieter J. Mosterman, David Escobar Sanabria, Enes Bilgin, Kun Zhang, Justyna Zander, Automating Humanitarian Missions with a Heterogeneous Fleet of Vehicles, audioslides, IFAC Annual Reviews in Control, vol. 38, issue 2, 2014
Justyna Zander, Smart Emergency Response System - Eye in the Sky, Plenary talk, SCS Summer Simulation Multi-Conference, July 2014
Pieter J. Mosterman, Justyna Zander, Ascension Vizinho-Coutry, Virtual and Physical Integration of Autonomous Vehicles for an Automated Humanitarian Mission, Poster at Complex Systems Design & Management Conference, 2014
Pieter J. Mosterman, David Escobar Sanabria, Enes Bilgin, Kun Zhang, Justyna Zander, A Heterogeneous Fleet of Vehicles for Automated Humanitarian Missions, Computing in Science and Engineering, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 90-95, May-June, 2014
Justyna Zander and Pieter J. Mosterman, From Internet of Things through Computation of Things to a Prediction Engine - SmartAmerica Challenge 2013 Workshop at White House, Washington DC, Dec. 2013 (with Peter Norvig)
Pieter J. Mosterman, Enes Bilgin, David Escobar Sanabria, Kun Zhang, Justyna Zander, Autonomous Vehicles on a Humanitarian Mission - SmartAmerica Challenge 2013 Workshop at White House, Washington DC, Dec. 2013
Justyna Zander and Pieter J. Mosterman, Computation for Humanity—Information Technology to Advance Society, ISBN-10:1439883270, CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, Oct. 2013
Related videos from the SERS partners:
MathWorks: "technical concept"
University of North Texas: "outside environment - flying drones"
Boeing and University of Washington: "driving robot followed by a drone"
Worcester Polytechnic Institute: "Google Glass for wheelchair"
Worcester Polytechnic Institute: "Atlas humanoid"
North Carolina State University: "sensory dogs"
MIT Media lab: "ShAir app for relay (gossip) network"
The inventory of the resulting SERS system includes the following elements integrated with the mission center and in part with each other:
MATLAB: Optimization (e.g., mixed-integer linear programming optimization), mission user interface, and a display on a geo-map
Simulink: Simulation of the vehicles fleet (e.g., AR.Drones, ground vehicles, fixed wings)
Simulink and MATLAB: Interface for visualization of the simulation part in Google Earth
MATLAB: Integration of the system with other software/hardware providers
MATLAB: Communication component (UDP, TCP, and serial)
Android application (MIT)
MATLAB: GUI for Atlas (WPI), integrated with SERS GUI
MATLAB: GUI for WiFi drones (UNT), integrated with SERS GUI
Hardware/software from:
UNT (drones with antennas),
NCSU (dog harness),
WPI (ATLAS humanoid, Google Glass),
UW (Kuka arm),
BluHaptics (haptic device),
Boeing (drones and virtual reality),
AR.Drone and phones.
MATLAB Home™ gives the full capabilities of MATLAB® for personal use for $149.
"Cyber-physical systems are integrated hybrid networks of cyber and engineered physical elements,” federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park explained Wednesday. “These cyber and physical elements come together like peanut butter and jelly to make a really tasty sandwich.” A demo of the emergency response system, which is still in development, was on display along with 23 other projects at the Smart America Challenge Expo in Washington. “Some parts of this already existed as separate projects,” Park said of the response system. “But the nine organizations are now working as a collaborative Smart America team, and they found new ways to integrate and expand the system.” --- NextGov 2014
How to run SERS using the MATLAB SERS apps?
Open MATLAB.
Retrieve the repository from GitHub (see Matt's instructions how to do it).
Install four MATLAB apps using the *.mlappinstall files from the main folder of the retrieved repository (see instructions).
Open two additional MATLABs.
Go to APPS tab in MATLAB in each of the MATLAB sessions.
Click the icons:
'SERS server' app in the first MATLAB session.
'SERS optimization' app in the second MATLAB session.
'SERS requests' app in the third MATLAB session.
'SERS stop' app cleans up when you stop SERS functionalities.
Patent applications:
Systems, Methods and Devices for the Rapid Assessment and Deployment of Appropriate Modular Aid Solutions in Response to Disasters, Daniel, S.R. and Coleman, T.W. and Schwartz, Y. and Wadia, Z.R. and Zander, J., 2009, US Patent App. 12/870,117.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse