Collaborative research: cybertraining: pilot: concurrent computing curricula for cyber-physical systems

The National Science Foundation Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure awarded Western Michigan University $120,941 on August 1, 2026, for a pilot project developing concurrent computing curricula for cyber-physical systems under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070).

The project delivers four modular learning units addressing concurrent execution foundations, fault tolerance in distributed systems, timing and synchronization in autonomous vehicle software using Robot Operating System 2 and the CARLA simulation environment, and safety and security assurance in aviation systems using agent-based simulation of unmanned aerial system swarms and collision-avoidance protocols. The project extends and modernizes a concurrency visualization system by adding instrumentation libraries for POSIX Threads, FreeRTOS, and Robot Operating System 2, and develops a concurrent event description language for instructor-created demonstrations.

The curriculum and open educational tools are designed to strengthen engineering education in concurrent and distributed computing relevant to safety-critical applications in automobiles, aircraft, and other systems where software must perform multiple simultaneous tasks reliably.

Performance runs through July 31, 2028, with work performed in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Abstract

Automobiles, aircraft, and other safety-critical systems depend on software that must perform many tasks simultaneously. Small timing or coordination mistakes can go unnoticed and later lead to unsafe behavior and costly failures. This project develops practical training materials to help engineers build safer, more reliable safety-critical systems. Improved training gives engineers the practical knowledge and hands-on experience needed to build safer, more reliable systems. By strengthening this dimension of engineering education, the nation's infrastructure will be safer and more reliable. This project develops a modular curriculum and open educational tools for concurrent and distributed computing in engineering contexts. Technical activities include four learning modules that address: (1) the foundations of concurrent execution, including race conditions, deadlock, synchronization primitives, and the happens-before relation; (2) fault tolerance in distributed systems, covering failure taxonomies, checkpointing, consensus protocols, and self-stabilization; (3) timing and synchronization in autonomous vehicle software, using the robot operating system 2 and the carla simulation environment to expose how scheduling and message-passing choices affect safety-critical control pipelines; and (4) safety and security assurance in aviation systems, using agent-based simulation to model unmanned aerial system swarms, aeronautical communication networks, and collision-avoidance invariants. On the tooling side, the project extends and modernizes an existing concurrency visualization system by adding instrumentation libraries for three widely used platforms in cyber-physical systems: posix threads, freertos, and robot operating system 2. The project also develops a concurrent event description language for instructor-created demonstrations and evaluates outcomes through classroom pilots, pre- and post-assessments, and usability studies. Expected contributions include reusable instructional modules and software tools. 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.- subawards are not planned for this award.