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.