SaTC: EDU: Inculcate a culture of preparedness against AI security threats to pervasive robotic systems

Robotics, automation, and related Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have become pervasive, resulting in concerns related to security, safety, accuracy, and trust. With growing dependency on physical robots that work closely with humans, security is becoming increasingly important because cyber-attacks could lead to privacy invasion, critical operations sabotages, and bodily harm. The current shortfall of professionals who can defend such systems demands development and integration of new curricula. This project is creating a new curriculum with the scaffolding necessary to engage students at the junior/senior university level who are majoring in robotics, AI, and security related fields. More than 500 students are being directly served by this educational initiative at Mississippi State University. The project also indirectly impacts students across the nation at institutions in which faculty choose to integrate the modules developed for this project. On a broader scale, this project intends to increase public scientific literacy and engagement, especially in rapidly advancing fields such as cybersecurity, robotics, and AI. This is a significant societal benefit as it will improve the preparedness and well-being of individuals in a technologically advanced society and contribute to development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce. The project is developing seven self-contained and adaptive modules on “AI security threats to pervasive robotic systems”. Topics will include: 1) introduction, examples of attacks, and motivation; 2) robotic AI attack surfaces and penetration testing; 3) attack patterns and security strategies for input sensors; 4) training attacks and associated security strategies; 5) inference attacks and associated security strategies; 6) actuator attacks and associated security strategies; and 7) ethics of AI, robotics, and cybersecurity. Course modules are evaluated to determine their impact on students. Workshops and tutorial sessions at conferences are used to expand the project’s impact and provide students and enthusiasts with hands-on experience. A two-day training workshop for external faculty further enables dissemination of the modules. 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.