• Intuition...
  • ...studying...
  • ...formalizing ideas...
  • ...and veryfing the results

Ongoing Research Projects

Hybrid Dynamical Systems and UAVs for Tactical Resupply

In this research, we design adaptive control systems for hyrbid, time-varying dynamical systems. Theoretical results are applied to the design of autopilots for UAVs employed as for tactical resupply.

Sponsor: ARL AvMC

Constrained Robust Adaptive Control and Tailsitter UAVs

Innovative robust adaptive control laws for prescribed performance are designed. Furthermore, novel control systems for multi-rotor UAVs equipped with wings are designed. These results are applied to the design of autopilots for tailsitter UAVs, such as quadbiplanes.

Sponsor: ARL and NAVAIR

Robust Data-Driven Control of Autonomous Vehicles

Robust data-driven control for autonomous aerial and terrestrial robots are created, implemented, and testeded. Teams of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) equipped with robotic arms collaborate with one another and with human operators to perform high-precision and high-speed operations.

Sponsor: RCTA, Collaborators: Army Research Lab, Dr. Likhachev (Carnegie Mellon University)

Terramechanics & Autonomous Ground Vehicles' Guidance and Control

In this research, we integrate original terramechanics models with tactical guidance and robust adaptive control algorithms for autonomous ground vehicles operating off-road at high speed.

Sponsor: US Army GVSC

Collaborators: Dr. Sandu (Virginia Tech)

Past Research Projects

Autonomous UAVs Perofrming Shipboard Landing

We designed innovative robust adaptive control algorithms to counteract the effects of severe disturbances and unmodeled dynamics. These theoretical results were applied to design autopilots for multi-rotor UAVs performing shipboard landing. Special emphasis was given to the study of the ground effect and the wake of ships on multi-rotor UAVs in proximity of the landing pad.

Sponsor: ONR

Bio-Inspired GNC System for UAVs Moving in Tactical Terrain

In this research, we designed a bio-inspired guidance, navigation, and control sytstem for autopilots of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) operating in potentially hostile areas.

Sponsor: DARPA

Aerial robotics

In this research, we pursue the design of guidance, navigation, and control systems for multi-rotor unmanned aerial manipulators (UAMs) equipped with robotic arms to autonomosly find, pickup, manipulate, and deploy objects in unknown environments.

Sponsor: ARL

Constrained Control Design and UAS

In this research, we designed robust adaptive control laws for nonlinear dynamical systems subject to constraints on the state, the trajectory tracking error, and the control input are designed. These control laws were tested in simulation and on actual unmanned aerial systems.

Sponsor: ARL

UAS and Improved Weather Services

In this research, we designed autopilots for UAS collecting data for improved weather forecasts. We also combined an indirect adaptive control law and an unscented Kalman filter to estimate the wind velocity from the effort needed to hover the vehicle.

Sponsor: NOAA

Optimal Control for Finite-Time Stabilization

It is often desireable to attain finite-time stability of a nonlinear system, that is, converging to a Lyapunov stable equilibrium point in finite time. In this research, we provided sufficient conditions for state- and output-feedback optimal finite-time stabilization. YouTube video.

Differential Games of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

In this research, we studied two-player differential games whose end-of-game condition is the closed-loop asymptotic, partial-state, or finite-time stability of the closed-loop system despite the evader's input. Connections to robust nonlinear control are explored.

Output-Feedback Sliding Mode Control with Constraints on the State Space

Accounting for recent results in the theory of time-varying finite-time stable dynamical systems, in this reseach we designed sliding mode controls for nonlinear constrained dynamical systems. The proposed control law is effective with any observer.

Optimal Semistabilization of Linear and Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

In this research, we derived state-feedback control laws that minimize a performance measure in integral form and guarantee semistability of the closed-loop system. YouTube Videos: Video 1 and Video 2.