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Infrastructure assistance has been proposed as a viable solution to improve the capabilities of commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), especially toward fully autonomous operations. The airborne nature of these devices imposes…
Gliding offers small fixed-wing UAVs extended endurance and silent operation but requires accurate energy management, especially under wind disturbances and obstacle constraints. Traditional Total Energy Control Systems based controllers…
A significant barrier to deploying autonomous vehicles (AVs) on a massive scale is safety assurance. Several technical challenges arise due to the uncertain environment in which AVs operate such as road and weather conditions, errors in…
Space missions are characterized by long distances, difficult or unavailable communication and high operating costs. Moreover, complexity has been constantly increasing in recent years. For this reason, improving the autonomy of space…
Interstellar objects (ISOs) represent a compelling and under-explored category of celestial bodies, providing physical laboratories to understand the formation of our solar system and probe the composition and properties of material formed…
State estimation and control is a well-studied problem in conventional aerial vehicles such as multi-rotors. But multi-rotors, while versatile, are not suitable for all applications. Due to turbulent airflow from ground effects,…
Microtransit systems represent an enhancement to solve the first- and last-mile problem, integrating traditional rail and bus networks with on-demand shuttles into a flexible, integrated system. This type of demand responsive transport…
Understanding the physics of small bodies such as asteroids, comets, and planetary moons will help us understand the formation of the solar system, and also provide us with resources for a future space economy. Due to these reasons,…
The next generation of space systems will have to achieve more and more complex missions. In order to master the development cost and duration of such systems, an alternative to a manual design is to automatically synthesize the main…
Autonomous Vehicles are currently being tested in a variety of scenarios. As we move towards Autonomous Vehicles, how should intersections look? To answer that question, we break down an intersection management into the different conundrums…
Variability constraints are an integral part of the requirements for a configurable system. The constraints specified in the requirements on the legal combinations of options define the space of potential valid configurations for the…
The emergence of a global market for urban air mobility and unmanned aerial systems has attracted many startups across the world. These organizations have little training or experience in the traditional processes used in civil aviation for…
This paper presents the design, development, and application of a novel space simulation environment for rapidly prototyping and testing flight software for distributed space systems. The environment combines the flexibility, determinism,…
The resurgence of lunar operations requires advancements in cislunar navigation and Space Situational Awareness (SSA). Challenges associated to these tasks have created an interest in autonomous planning, navigation, and tracking…
This paper develops a robust optimization based method to design orbits on which the sensory perception of the desired physical quantities are maximized. It also demonstrates how to incorporate various constraints imposed by many spacecraft…
An important capability of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is autonomous landing while avoiding collision with obstacles in the process. Such capability requires real-time local trajectory planning. Although trajectory-planning…
Autonomous systems use independent decision-making with only limited human intervention to accomplish goals in complex and unpredictable environments. As the autonomy technologies that underpin them continue to advance, these systems will…
The next generation of space systems will have to achieve more and more complex missions. In order to master the development cost and duration of such systems, an alternative to a manual design is to automatically synthesize the main…
Autonomous 3D scanning of open-world target structures via drones remains challenging despite broad applications. Existing paradigms rely on restrictive assumptions or effortful human priors, limiting practicality, efficiency, and…
As autonomous systems are being developed in multiple industries it has been recognized that a phased approach is needed both for technical development and user acceptance. Partially in response, the automotive and aircraft industries have…