Aircraft Computational & Resource Aware Fault Tolerance (AirCRAFT) Lab

At the AirCRAFT lab, our goals are to leverage the advantages of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) - versatility, low cost, flexibility, minimal risk overhead and the tacit acceptance of a potential loss. This makes them the ideal platforms for experimental evaluation of cutting edge, high risk/high reward flight control algorithms, especially those addressing adverse flight conditions such as failures of sensors and actuators.

While the stated problem is succinct and the first part of is relatively obvious – Keep airplanes safe – the latter part of that statement - no matter what, while flying a mission - encompasses all the important research questions as the eventual safety of an aircraft is influenced by a large number of seemingly disparate factors.

Our research philosophy has been to address aircraft safety from a holistic perspective, starting from a more expanded definition of aircraft safety to include the performance of various sensors and actuators on the aircraft, its structure, the pilot who is flying, to the performance capabilities of the aircraft itself.

We seek to address aircraft safety from a holistic perspective, starting from a more expanded definition of aircraft safety to include the performance of various sensors and actuators on the aircraft, its structure, the pilot who is flying, to the performance capabilities of the aircraft itself.

We also work on novel interfaces to drones - at the AirCRAFT Lab you can control a drone by talking to it, or by using gestures, or through virtual/augmented reality. We consider our drones to be like new born babies or toddlers and we play the role of parents and teachers and use neural networks/machine learning/supervised learning to help them - they are learning to understand their surroundings by recognizing the landmarks around them, create a maps with spatial relationships between them that will help them navigate a new environment without the use of GPS, using only their cameras.

Our drones are also adaptive; they can change their shape in flight to navigate through tight spaces; our unmanned systems are resilient - they are learning to continue flying even if they are damaged; our drones are friendly and like large crowds - they are learning to fly in swarms, and reconfigure themselves as a need arises; our drones are helpful - they can deliver bio-control measures for pest control in fields and farms; our drones are sentries - they are learning to recognize intruders (drones) and track them to keep us safe; our drones are also teachers - they are used in the classroom to help crystallize fundamental concepts through real world applications...