Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory

Research Goal

Establish trust in autonomous systems so that they interact with humans and their environment safely, reliably, and predictably to mutually accomplish  desired missions and tasks.  Our focus is on integrating Low Cost Attritable unmanned Aircraft Technology (LCAAT) with autonomy to provide a game changing capability that transforms the way Unmanned Air Systems are built, flown, and operated.

VSCL Students selected for Summer 2018 Internships

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Many students of the Texas A&M Vehicle Systems and Control Laboratory have been selected for offsite internships for the Summer of 2018. These internships show VSCL student representation at a variety of companies and institutions across the United States. Students which have been selected for internships in the Summer of 2018 include:

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and Ph.D. Student Vinicius G. Goecks has been selected for a Summer 2018 internship at US Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, MD. Vinicius will be working as a Research Fellow on the US Army initiative to investigate how humans can shape the behavior of autonomous machines driven by learning algorithms. Vinicius has been an active member of VSCL since Spring 2016, focusing on human-machine interaction and the control of UAS with Machine Learning, and the Intelligent Motion Video Target Tracking for UAS.

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and Master of Engineering Student Emily Fojtik has been selected for a Summer 2018 internship at  VectorNav Technologies, Dallas, TX. Emily will be working as a Test Engineer Intern, with a principal focus of automating and expediting the verification and validation of products at VectorNav.  Emily started working with VSCL in the Spring of 2016, with her major roles including managing the Texas A&M University Engineering Flight Simulator and developing a means for evaluating human factors aspects for Head Mounted Displays (HMD) for Enhanced Vision System technologies.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant and B. S. Aerospace Engineering student Charles Noren has been selected for a Summer 2018 internship at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. Charles will be working as a Technical Intern at the Autonomy Incubator. He will be performing research on guidance laws and motion planning for autonomous robots. Charles has been an active member of VSCL since Spring 2015, where he has worked on projects including the Shape Memory Alloy Actuator Replacement, the autonomous railroad scout vehicle, and the Intelligent Motion Video Target Tracking for UAS.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant and B.S. Aerospace Engineering student Blake Krpec has been selected for a Summer 2018 internship at Air Tractor, in Olney, TX. Blake will be working as an Aerospace Engineering Intern, where he will be working on developing on board electronic flight systems for production aircraft as well as systems for R&D flights. Blake has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2016, where he has supported VSCL flight test projects relating to sensor integration and aircraft performance.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant and B.S. Aerospace Engineering student Hannah Lehman has been selected for a Summer 2018 internship at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, IA. Hannah will be working as a Technical Systems Engineer on the Advanced Concepts team in Commercial Systems. She will be a part a new initiative in the Research and Development of autonomous systems for commercial purposes. Hannah has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2017, focusing on human-machine interaction and the control of UAS with Machine Learning.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant and B.S. Aerospace Engineering Student Victoria Nagorski has been selected for a Summer 2018 internship at Northrop Grumman Corporation in Melbourne, FL. Victoria will be working as a Technical Intern to investigate how to write a flight test plan. Victoria has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2017, where she supports a variety of VSCL UAS flight test projects from aircraft performance test to sensor evaluation.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant and B.S. Aerospace Engineering Student Christopher A. Marcario has been selected for a position at the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Center for calendar year 2018. Chris will be working as an Undergraduate Researcher for the Cyber Spectrum Collaborative Research Environment, which is funded by Air Force Research Laboratory through Clarkson Aerospace, to identify vulnerabilities and demonstrate exploits on civilian unmanned aerial vehicles. Chris has been an active member of VSCL since Spring 2018, focusing on evaluating human factors aspects for head mounted displays for Enhanced Vision System technologies in the Texas A&M University Engineering Flight Simulator.

Congratulations to all who have been selected for internships!

VSCL graduate Joshua Harris recognized for research excellence at national and university levels

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Joshua Harris, a December 2017 graduate from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and a graduate research assistant of the Texas A&M Vehicle Systems and Control Laboratory, has been awarded the 2018 Association of Former Students Distinguished Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Research  in the Masters category. He defended his master’s thesis titled “Nonlinear Adaptive Inversion Control for Variable Stability Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems” in October 2017, and he is being recognized for his outstanding academic record and contributions in aerospace engineering by a distinguished committee of reviewers.

Please see the full announcement by Jan McHarg on the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station website, here: “Harris recognized for research excellence at national and university levels”

 

VSCL hosts Dr. Mary Cummings

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On Friday, 2 February VSCL hosted Dr. Mary (Missy) Cummings, Director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments at Duke University in the Engineering Flight Simulator (EFS).  Dr. Cummings flew the EFS and demonstrated Basic Fighter Maneuvers (BFM) using an A-4E Skyhawk Aggressor.  Pictured are Emily Fojtik, Dr. Cummings, Victoria Nagorski, Lexi Heinimann, Chris Marcario, and Dr. Valasek.

Intelligent Motion Video Target Tracking Flight Testing Presented by VSCL at 2018 AIAA Infotech@Aerospace Conference

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VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant Chase Noren ’18 presented flight test results of an autonomous tracking intelligent agent at the AIAA Infotech@Aerospace Conference on 11 January at the 2018 AIAA SciTech Forum. The goal of this continuing project is to autonomously track fixed and moving user-selected targets with a non-gimbaled image capturing device mounted on a Small/micro fixed-wing UAS. The autonomous intelligent agent acts independently of human operators and the developed algorithm learns and operates without the need for prior information of road networks or terrain features.  The paper documenting this work is “Flight Testing of Intelligent Motion Video Guidance for Unmanned Air System Ground Target Surveillance,” AIAA-2018-1632.

Han-Hsun “Jack” Lu Defends MS Thesis on Tuesday, 5 December 2017

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Han-Hsun “Jack” Lu (M.S.  National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan) successfully defended his Master of Science Thesis titled “Online Near Real-Time System Identification on Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems”. Using automated control surface excitation, Lu proposed a method for both constructing a full dynamic system for an UAS and then representing that system in state space form. His method can be used to update the model in flight at the request of a human operator. Congratulations Jack! Thank you for all you have done in the lab. We look forward to hearing about your successes in the future!

Han-Hsun (Jack) Lu presents at GEOSAT seminar series

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VSCL Graduate Research Assistant Han-Hsun “Jack” Lu (M.S.  National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.) was invited to speak at the GEOSAT seminar series. Lu discussed the different challenges facing engineering and vehicle support for data science collection missions. Talking points included information about the recently concluded precision agriculture missions conducted by VSCL from 2015-2017. A seminar recap was written by GEOSAT and may be found here.

 

Joshua Harris Defends MS Thesis on Tuesday, 17 October 2017

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Joshua Harris (B.S. Texas A&M University) successfully defended his Master of Science Thesis titled “Nonlinear Adaptive Dynamic Inversion Control for Variable Stability Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems”. Harris’s work provides a unique resource to the aerospace community and serves as a holistic review of aircraft modeling and its applications to flight control research. However, the main contributions of his work comes in the form of introducing nonlinear adaptive control laws which are then applied to a Command Augmentation System (CAS) and simulating a variety of variable stability in-flight controller designs. Harris has already accepted a position as a Software Engineer with the Flight Control/VMS Group at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Fort Worth, TX. Congratulations Josh! We are all extremely proud of you and your accomplishments and we look forward to seeing all the great work you will do in the future.

 

Douglas Famularo Defends Ph.D. Dissertation on Monday, 25 September 2017

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Douglas Famularo (B.S., M.S. Cornell University) successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled “Observer-Based Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Adaptive Control with State Constraints”.  This work is supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, and is focused on the flight control and the prevention of inlet unstart on hypersonic UAS.  Doug spent three consecutive summer internships in the Control Science Center at AFRL working on it.  Douglas has accepted a controls research position at Aurora Flight Sciences Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA. Congratulations Doug, all of VSCL is very proud of you and your accomplishments!

 

Joshua Harris Receives 2017 Outstanding Master of Science Student Award from College of Engineering

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Joshua Harris (B.S. Aerospace Engineering ‘14, Texas A&M University) was selected by the College of Engineering as the recipient of the 2017-2018 Outstanding Engineering Master of Science Graduate Student Award, out of a total of 1,134 currently enrolled MS students in the College of Engineering.

This award was created to recognize current graduate students who have demonstrated excellence above and beyond usual levels of achievement for their field.  Candidates are evaluated by faculty in the College of Engineering on the basis of scholastic achievements, leadership, service and character.  Recipients receive a commemorative memento of recognition and a monetary award of $5,000 as a one-time scholarship. 

Joshua is a graduate research assistant in VSCL since his freshman year and has contributed to essentially every research program since that time.  He has been working with his advisor, Dr. John Valasek, for six years.  Harris earned bachelor’s in aerospace engineering Summa Cum Laude from Texas A&M in 2014. He is a recipient of the National Defense Science Engineering Graduate Fellowship, the NASA Aeronautics Scholarship, the FAA PEGASAS Center of Excellence Outstanding Student Researcher Award, and the Sigma Gamma Tau Outstanding Texas A&M University Aerospace Engineering Senior for 2014. Harris is currently a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Intelligent Systems Technical Committee. This semester he will be defending his master’s thesis “Nonlinear Adaptive Inversion Control for Variable Stability Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems”.  He has accepted a position as a Software Engineer with the Flight Control/VMS Group at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Fort Worth, TX.

VSCL awarded Phase I research project from Air Force Research Laboratory through sub-contract with Barron Associates for Autonomous Aerial Refueling of UAVs

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The Texas A&M University VSCL and  Land Air Space Robotics Laboratory (LASR) have been subcontracted through Barron Associates to support a new Air Force Research Laboratory program on autonomous aerial refueling of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV).  VSCL has 15 years of experience and a patent on Autonomous Aerial Refueling of UAVs, and together with LASR will provide the UAV simulations, control laws, and sensor selection and modeling.  The Texas A&M University personnel are PI Dr. John Valasek and Co-PI Dr. Majji Manoranjan, both of the Texas A&M University Aerospace Engineering Department.  Working on this project is Master of Engineering student Ezekiel Bowden  (B. S. Aerospace Engineering ‘17, Texas A&M University).