Project Grant 2629994
- This National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Federal Grant Program award, with a total funding of $175,000, supports the development of novel verification methodologies to enhance software quality, safety, and security for safety-critical and security-critical applications such as self-driving cars and digital medical services. The project aims to develop verification techniques based on first-order assertions and auxiliary logical variables,...
- This $316,963 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program will support research to enhance the safety and reliability of autonomous vehicles. The project aims to thoroughly examine and improve the controller and machine learning components of autonomous driving systems through a combination of model-based and data-driven approaches. The research will focus on identifying spatial and temporal vulnerabilities that...
- This $279,674 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070) will fund the development of MELIOREM, an automated tool designed to enhance the safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs). The project aims to leverage high-performance computing infrastructure to conduct rigorous testing of AVs in simulated driving scenarios, identifying and addressing potential safety issues before they impact public...
- This $199,822 National Science Foundation project grant, awarded under the Integrative Activities program, will fund research at West Virginia University and Stanford University to develop algorithms for safety validation of autonomous systems. The goal is to build trust in AI-enabled complex systems for safety-critical applications by leveraging information from multiple sources. The researchers will develop tools using data-driven optimization and reinforcement learning algorithms to...
- This $270,913 federal Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program, supports research to develop qualitative and quantitative methodologies for assessing the safety of learning-enabled autonomous systems. The project, led by the Augusta University Research Institute, Inc. (AURI), will target foundational challenges in capturing uncertainties from environments and providing timely, comprehensive, and...
- This $235,187 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports research to develop principled algorithms and practical tools for systematically discovering and repairing unsafe behavior in multi-module autonomous vehicle systems. The key objectives are to: (1) create an automated method for constructing test scenarios that decouple high-level semantics and low-level details; (2) develop a search-based testing approach to efficiently...
- Federal Cooperative Agreement Summary Saferdive AI LLC received a $1.55 million cooperative agreement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) awarded September 1, 2025, with completion targeted for August 31, 2028. Under this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Fast-Track Pilot Project, the company will develop a generative artificial intelligence-driven simulation framework designed to validate autonomous vehicle safety...
- The National Science Foundation Division of Information and Intelligent Systems awarded the University of Florida $399,756 on October 1, 2025, to develop qualitative and quantitative safety assessment methodologies for learning-enabled autonomous systems operating in unfamiliar or unprecedented environments. The research targets foundational challenges in system-level safety verification for learning systems that interact with the physical world—such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, and...
- This $272,238 Project Grant, awarded on July 15, 2024 by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070), supports research to enhance the safety and reliability of autonomous vehicles. The project aims to identify vulnerabilities in the software and machine learning components of autonomous vehicle systems, and develop mitigation techniques to improve their overall resilience. The research will combine model-based and...
- This $500,000 project grant, awarded on January 1, 2024 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070), aims to address the urgent need for end-to-end safety in learning-enabled autonomous systems across various application scenarios, such as self-driving cars and urban air mobility. The project, titled "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: SLES: GUARANTEED TUBES FOR SAFE LEARNING ACROSS AUTONOMY ARCHITECTURES,"...
I-CORPS: TRANSLATION POTENTIAL OF A VERIFICATION SOFTWARE MODULE THAT EVALUATES END-TO-END DRIVING MODELS FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES -THIS I-CORPS PROJECT IS BASED ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FORMAL VERIFICATION FRAMEWORK THAT MATHEMATICALLY EVALUATES THE SAFETY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MODELS FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES BEFORE THEY ARE DEPLOYED. CURRENT VALIDATION METHODS FOR AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS RELY ON RUNNING BILLIONS OF SIMULATED SCENARIOS TO FIND FAILURES, WHICH CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR THE EFFECTIVELY INFINITE NUMBER OF UNPREDICTABLE CASES THAT CAN OCCUR IN THE REAL WORLD. TO ADDRESS THIS MASSIVE CHALLENGE, THIS TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES A PROACTIVE SOFTWARE UTILITY DESIGNED TO AUDIT THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MODEL AND PREDICT UNSTABLE OPERATING REGIONS BEFORE ANY SIMULATIONS ARE RUN. BY SHIFTING FROM REACTIVE TESTING TO PROACTIVE VERIFICATION, THIS TECHNOLOGY MAY SIGNIFICANTLY ACCELERATE THE SAFE AND CERTIFIABLE DEPLOYMENT OF ADVANCED AUTOMATED SYSTEMS, ULTIMATELY HELPING TO REDUCE TRAFFIC CRASHES AND FATALITIES. IN ADDITION, THIS TECHNOLOGY HAS POTENTIAL APPLICATION IN OTHER AREAS, OFFERING A WAY TO ENSURE THE BOUNDED, SAFE OPERATION OF GENERAL ROBOTICS, MANUFACTURING PROCESSES, AND ADVANCED GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS. THIS I-CORPS PROJECT UTILIZES EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING COUPLED WITH FIRST-HAND INVESTIGATION OF THE INDUSTRY ECOSYSTEM TO ASSESS THE TRANSLATION POTENTIAL OF A FORMAL VERIFICATION SOFTWARE FRAMEWORK FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES. THE GOAL OF THIS TECHNOLOGY IS TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN ADVANCED MATHEMATICAL VERIFICATION AND APPLIED INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE ENGINEERING BY INVESTIGATING THE CORE FRICTION POINTS VALIDATION TEAMS FACE. THIS TECHNOLOGY IS BASED ON SEMIDEFINITE PROGRAMMING RELAXATIONS COMBINED WITH TOPOLOGICAL DATA ANALYSIS TO COMPUTE CERTIFIED SAFETY BOUNDS FOR END-TO-END NEURAL NETWORKS. THE TECHNICAL RESULTS SHOW THAT THIS DETERMINISTIC METHOD GUARANTEES MATHEMATICALLY STRICT PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES. THIS METHOD IS DIFFERENT FROM EXISTING SIMULATION-BASED SOLUTIONS IN ITS ABILITY TO MATHEMATICALLY MAP A NEURAL NETWORK'S LATENT MANIFOLD COVERAGE TO PROACTIVELY FLAG UNSTABLE OPERATING REGIONS WITHOUT RELYING ON STATISTICAL SAMPLING. THIS MAY TRANSFORM THEORETICAL MATHEMATICAL BOUNDS INTO A ROBUST, VERIFICATION-AWARE ARCHITECTURE THAT PROVIDES A FOUNDATION FOR THE SCALABLE SAFETY CERTIFICATION OF COMPLEX ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS. USERS MAY DEPLOY THIS TECHNOLOGY AS AN ON-PREMISE PLUG-IN THAT PROVIDES A RANKED INSTABILITY REPORT, ENABLING ENGINEERS TO PRIORITIZE TESTING AND DRASTICALLY REDUCE COMPUTING COSTS. 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.
Mod # | Description | ReasonForModification | Federal Obligation | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not listed | $50.0k | 8/10/26 |