Flight Dynamics & Control/ Hybrid Systems Lab
Welcome to FD&C/HS Lab!
Intelligent & High Assurance Autonomy for CPS
The research in the FD&C/HS Lab (Lab Director: Professor Inseok Hwang) focuses on two directions: fundamental research on Intelligent and High Assurance autonomy for the Cyber-Physical System (CPS), which is a complex (networked) system with interacting physical and logical components, using hybrid systems theory, and its applications to safety-critical aerospace systems such as aircraft, spacecraft, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and Air Traffic Control (ATC), and multiple-vehicle systems (e.g., swarm of UAS). Note that aerospace systems are good examples of the CPS. For example, a UAS (similarly, aircraft and spacecraft) is composed of an autopilot which is a logical element and a vehicle that is a physical element, thus it is a CPS. (learn more)
Recent News
January 9, 2025
First Place Poster Award – 2024 NASA ImaginAviation University Poster Session
The "NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) Project: Secure and Safe Assured Autonomy (S2A2)" team (Sounghwan Hwang) received a 1st place poster award at the NASA ImaginAviation Annual Conference on February 2024. Collaborating with researchers from Georgia Tech and North Carolina A&T State University, Sounghwan Hwang presented his research regarding "Reactive and Proactive Cyberattack Defense Strategy for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Applications". Competing against over 30 other ULI projects, the S2A2 team earned top honors. Looking ahead, the team remains committed to advancing secure and safe assured autonomy for UAM applications, contributing to the success and growth of the UAM industry.
December 12, 2025
DARPA Learning Introspective Control (LINC) completes Exercise 1
The "DARPA Learning Introspective Control (LINC)" team (Hyunsang Park) has successfully completed the first exercise of the project. This achievement highlights the data-driven control framework's introspective capabilities in understanding the changing system and environment, ensuring the safety of the Wave Adaptive Modular Vehicle (WAM-V) during a human-in-the-loop docking operation in an uncertain environment with unknown system faults.
November 20, 2024
NSF CPS Frontier 5th year annual site visit
The "NSF CPS Frontier: Cognitive Autonomy for Human CPS" team (Sooyung Byeon and Joonwon Choi) has successfully completed its 5th-year annual site visit. During the visit, the team and its collaborators showcased significant achievements in cognitive autonomy research across five key thrusts: 1) cognitive models and predictive monitoring, 2) cognitively aware control, 3) transparent communication, 4) experimental demonstrations, and 5) outreach programs. Moving forward, the team will collaborate with eight professors from five universities across the nation to complete the NSF grant in its final year.
November 13-15, 2024
SSRC Annual Summit and GENZERO Workshop
The "UAS Cybersecurity" team, led by Kartik Anand Pant, has presented posters at the SSRC annual summit and Genzero Workshop. During the visit, the team presented their progress on cyberattack detection and mitigation strategies in UAS operations, focusing on identifying attack surfaces and network vulnerabilities. The team presented both theoretical and experimental results.
May 11, 2024
Sungsoo Kim graduated with Masters in AAE
Sungsoo Kim has graduated with M.S. in AAE for successful defense of his thesis titled “Safety Critical Control for UAVs: Integrating reinforceable control Barrier Functions with Sliding Mode Control”. Congratulations, Sungsoo on a successful defense!
May 11, 2024
Cheng-Han Yang graduated with Masters in AAE
Cheng-Han Yang has graduated with M.S. in AAE for successful defense of his thesis titled “Reachability Analysis of Cyber-Physical-Human Systems Using Gaussian Mixture Model with Side Information”. Congratulations, Cheng-Han on a successful defense!
May 11, 2024
Hong-Cheol Choi graduated with Doctorate in AAE
Hong-Cheol Choi has graduated with Ph.D. in AAE for a successful defense of his thesis titled “Physics-Guided Machine Learning Applications for Air Traffic Control”. Congratulations, Dr. Choi on a successful defense!
May 11, 2024
Sooyung Byeon graduated with Doctorate in AAE
Sooyung Byeon has graduated with Ph.D. in AAE for a successful defense of his thesis titled “Modeling, Training, and Teaming Approaches for Cyber-Physical-Human Systems”. Congratulations, Dr. Byeon on a successful defense!
Apr 9, 2024
Yi-Chieh Sun was awarded the 2024 Summer Research Fellowship
Yi-Chieh Sun has received the 2024 Summer Research Fellowship. Congratulations!
Aug 31, 2023
Hong-Cheol Choi, Hyunsang Park, and Chuhao Deng wins Best of Session Award from the 42nd AIAA/IEEE DASC conference
Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC) is held annually, with an emphasis on the application of autonomy in avionics and its impacts on safety. As the first author, Hong-Cheol Choi will present their paper on "Multi-agent Aircraft Estimated Time of Arrival Prediction in Terminal Airspace” in Barcelona, Spain, on October 1-5, 2023. Congratulations! (learn more)
Aug 11, 2023
Hong-Cheol Choi received the ACRP Graduate Research Award
Hong-Cheol Choi has received the ACRP (Airport Cooperative Research Program) Graduate Research Award from Transportation Research Board, National Academies. The ACRP Graduate Research Award is intended to stimulate thought, discussion, and research by those who may become future airport managers, operators, designers, and policymakers in aviation. The focus of this graduate student research program is on applied research on airport and related aviation system issues to help the public sector continue to improve the quality, reliability, safety, and security of the U.S. civil aviation system well into the foreseeable future. Congratulations!
May 14, 2023
Omanshu Thapliyal graduated with Doctorate in AAE
Omanshu Thapliyal has graduated with Ph.D. in AAE for a successful defense of his thesis titled "Data-driven Safety and Security of Cyberphysical Systems". Congratulations, Dr. Thapliyal on a successful defense!
Dec 20, 2022
Hong-Cheol Choi was awarded Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship
Hong-Cheol Choi has received the 2023-2024 Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship. The Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship provides support to outstanding Ph.D. candidates in the final year of doctoral degree completion.
Dec 18, 2022
Shanelle Clarke graduated with Doctorate in AAE
Shanelle Clarke has graduated with Ph.D. in AAE for successful defense of her thesis titled "Towards Provable Guarantees for Learning-based Control Paradigms". Congratulations, Dr. Clarke on a successful defense!
Dec 18, 2022
Dawei Sun graduated with Doctorate in AAE
Dawei Sun has graduated with Ph.D. in AAE for successful defense of his thesis titled "Towards Hybrid System Approaches for Cyber-Physical System Security and Resiliency". Congratulations, Dr. Sun on a successful defense!
Dec 17, 2022
Marvin Jesse graduated with Masters in AAE
Marvin Jesse has graduated with M.S. in AAE for successful defense of his thesis titled "A Novel Approach to Set-Membership Observer for Systems with Unknown Exogenous Inputs". Congratulations, Marvin on a successful defense!
April 13, 2022
Dawei Sun wins College of Engineering's Outstanding Research Award 2022
Every spring, the College of Engineering recognizes its graduate students who excel in teaching, service, and research. Dawei Sun wins the College's Outstanding Research Award for the year 2022. Congratulations Dawei! (learn more)
April 13, 2022
Omanshu Thapliyal wins College of Engineering's Excellence in Teaching Award 2022
Every spring, the College of Engineering recognizes its graduate students who excel in teaching, service, and research. Omanshu Thapliyal wins the College's Excellence in Teaching (Magoon) Award for the year 2022. Congratulations Omanshu! (learn more)