Research

Control Design of Unmanned Aerial and Ground Vehicles

Reinforcement Learning and Predictive Control

Observer-based Controllers for Unmanned Vehicles

Vision-based Aided Navigation for GPS-denied Regions

Nonlinear Estimators for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)

Attitude and Pose Estimation

Multi-agent: consensus, formation, and distributed control

Wildfire Detection using Modern Machine Learning Algorithms

UAV Avionics Systems and Integration

Avionics systems of a UAV or drone are the critical electronic components found onboard that regulate, navigate, and control UAV travel while ensuring public safety. Contemporary UAV avionics work together to facilitate success of UAV missions by enabling stable communication, secure identification protocols, novel energy solutions, multi-sensor accurate perception and autonomous navigation, precise path planning, that guarantees collision avoidance, reliable trajectory control, and efficient data transfer within the UAV system. Moreover, special consideration must be given to electronic warfare threats prevention, detection, and mitigation, and the regulatory framework associated with UAV operations. While some UAV missions are entirely dependent on a remote human operator others are either partially or fully autonomous independent of remote human control. Lack of onboard human operator necessitates precise and reliable UAV avionics systems. Considering the fact that the number of UAVs carrying out missions in the civil airspace is increasing exponentially, safe navigation achieved through effective and standardized procedures is paramount. Thus, it is crucial to ensure seamless and harmoniously operation of all the UAV avionics systems that include the flight control surfaces, UAV sensors, navigation and planning systems, communication systems and power systems. Furthermore, safe and responsible UAV use by general public, government bodies, and professional operators is enforced by transportation agencies worldwide through rigorous certification process and strict regulations. UAVs have powerful communication capabilities, not only can they be connected to cellular networks, but they also can enable terrestrial wireless communications by forming an assisted communication system and acting as aerial base stations or communication access points. Air-to-air communication between UAVs and air-to-ground communication between UAVs and ground stations are critical elements of UAV networks since they provide the necessary means of identification and communication to achieve the required tasks. UAV’s compact size and payload constraints make the energy resource it carries in short supply. Consequently, the key component of mission planning is optimization of the energy consumption and performance. UAVs can use a variety of energy systems, such as batteries, fuel, or renewable energy cells, and selecting the optimal energy system and focusing of energy management allows to achieve extended UAV flight duration and increased operational range.

Optimal selection of the energy source and its efficient management allow to minimize landing frequency for refueling or battery replenishment enhancing UAV versatility. Successful completion of a scheduled mission is highly dependent on the UAV’s perceptual capabilities and the resulting awareness of its current navigation states (starting point) in three-dimensional (3D) space including location (position and orientation) in the six degrees-of-freedom, speed, heading direction, and target destination. Successful perception and navigation is built on four key pillars: sensor selection, multi-sensor fusion, navigation techniques selection (map-based and mapless), and robust estimator design. Finding a collision free path in a cluttered environment requires careful path planning from initial location to the final destination in 3D space while tackling kinematic and dynamic constraints. Locating the suitable obstacle free path in 3D space requires solving the multi-objective Nondeterministic Polynomial-time NP-hard problem that has no single optimal solution. Once the collision free path is identified, trajectory control techniques are applied to track the UAV along the desired route. Another critical component of UAV avionics are the defense systems used to confront electronic warfare threats, such as destructive and non-destructive cyberattacks, transponder attacks and jamming threats, using state-of-the-art countermeasures and defensive aids.

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[Paper3] , [Paper2] , [Paper1]

Artificial Intelligence Implementation on Different Engineering Applications

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