Fault Tolerant Adaptive Aircraft Control
The goal of this research is to develop a control and estimation system to identify and correct for control surface failures on fixed-wing aircraft. Initial efforts have utilized MATLAB simulation and analysis tools for failure diagnostics and testing. The ultimate goal is to deploy and demonstrate the new control strategy on a radio-controlled model aircraft.
Autonomous Sea Plane for Whale Monitoring
This research centers around the design and optimization of a solar-powered, low-altitude seaplane for long-term oceanic monitoring. The goal of the project is to create an autonomous aerial vehicle capable of performing extended surveillance missions over the ocean to monitor marine life. Key aspects of the project include optimizing the vehicle’s battery capacity for different mission durations and locations, improving duty cycle performance, and ensuring reliable takeoff and landing on water. This work provides a sustainable alternative to traditional methods of marine monitoring, which are resource-intensive and costly.
Drone Swarms for Wildfire Fighting
This project is focused on developing a framework for automating firefighting operations using drone swarms. The current focus is the use of controlled burn operations to strategically burn out areas of vegetation to slow fire spread. This work is being performed in a custom fire simulation environment. The ultimate goal of the work is to develop algorithms for a heterogeneous swarm capable of utilizing numerous firefighting strategies simultaneously.
Multi-Agent Urban Air Mobility
This research project focuses on developing methods for how large numbers of heterogeneous aerial vehicles interact with each other. The current goal is to develop control algorithms that provide guarantees of collision avoidance of the vehicles all while minimizing deviations from their desired trajectory. This work seeks to interface directly with Urban Air Mobility (UAM), where the industry is expected to have many heterogeneous vehicles flying simultaneously. The work is currently being performed in simulation in a custom multi-agent dynamics environment.
Drone Capture System
This project is focused upon developing autonomous algorithms to track and capture enemy drones or other aerial vehicles. Our system consists of a Holybro X500 drone as the agent, and several dime-sized toy drones as the targets. Research topcis include localization, path planning, and controls.