CS262a: Fall 2031 Final Project Suggestions (And -- Description of the FogRobotics/DataCapsule Environment)

First, HERE is google-sheet with some project suggestions.

Many of you already have project thoughts. However, for those of you who are still looking, please look at that spreadsheet and put your name down if you are interested in projects. If you want to understand more of the details, feel free to reach out to the contact people listed in the "Contact names and email" columns.

FOG ROBOTICS PROJECTS:
There are a number of projects listed in the "Global Data Plane" area. This is actual a part of the FogRobotics project, an overview of which is below:

• Overview: Today’s exciting new world of data-driven technology, AI, and cyber-physical systems rely on
  information from widely disparate sources, combining processing and storage in the cloud with embedded
  sensors, actuators, and processing at the edge. This information includes both the inputs and outputs of
  computations as well as multi-versioned executables that drive such computations. Edge computing is
  essential, since sensors at the edge of the network (e.g., cameras) generate huge volumes of data that is
  ideally processed or distilled locally. Further, control loops with sensors, computing, and actuators require
  local communication for responsiveness and quality of service (QoS).
  
  Unfortunately, the edge of the network consists of islands of trusted hardware interspersed with a vast sea
  of untrusted hardware. Thus, there is a pressing need for connected systems to uniformly verify the integrity
  of the information on which they rely and similarly to provide a universal audit-trail for the information that they
  produce. Further, privacy must be respected by the infrastructure and relinquished only when necessary.
  
  

  

  
  To address these needs, we propose a fundamental refactoring of the network around cryptographically
  hardened bundles of data, called DataCapsules. DataCapsules are the cyberspace equivalent of shipping
  containers: uniquely named, secured bundles of information transported over a data-centric “narrow-waist”
  infrastructure called the Global Data Plane (GDP). The GDP partitions the network into Trust Domains (TDs)
  to allow clients to reason about the trustworthiness of hardware. When combined with trusted computing
  enclaves, the GDP enables applications to dynamically partition their functionality between the cloud and
  network edge, yielding better QoS, lower latency, and enhanced privacy without risking information integrity
  or obscuring its provenance.
  
  Related documentation:
  • Slides from a recent talk about DataCapsules: The Cloud is Not Enough: Enabling the Edge with Crytographically Hardened Data Capsules [pptx]
  • SCL: A Secure Concurrency Layer for Paranoid Stateful Lambdas (Draft submission for ASPLOS 22 - do not distribute!)
  • Secure Fog Robotics Using the Global Data Plane (NSF proposal; still looking for students!)
  • Global Data Plane: A Federated Vision for Secure Data in Edge Computing (Appears in Proceedings of the 39th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, ICDCS 2019)
  • A Fog Robotics approach to Deep Robot Learning: Application to Object Recognition and Grasp Planning in Surface Decluttering. (Appears in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2019)

Here are some suggested projects in this space. Note that many variations of these projects are possible.