Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory

VSCL graduate student Garrett Jares Awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Garrett Jares

Garrett Jares, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and Graduate Research Assistant in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, has been awarded a 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based Master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions. NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.

Garrett earned the BS degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University with a minor in Cybersecurity and a minor in Mathematics, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2017. He has been working in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory (VSCL) with his advisor, Dr. John Valasek, since his undergraduate senior capstone project in 2017. During his undergraduate education, Garrett studied extensively in cybersecurity including research in cryptography topics. Garrett’s work with VSCL has been developing embedded systems for Unmanned Air Systems (UAS), and overseeing the operation of the Engineering Flight Simulator Laboratory. Garrett is combining his undergraduate knowledge with his experience in VSCL to investigate Cybersecurity for air and space vehicles.

Garrett’s doctoral dissertation will investigate cyber-attacks designed that are designed to take control of an aircraft by targeting the vehicle’s sensor data. This research will help identify and better understand the vulnerabilities in current systems and develop safeguards against such attacks. Garrett is a recipient of the Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation Scholarship, the Edward C. Clay ’47 Memorial Scholarship, and the 2018 Lechner Graduate Fellowship.

Bera to Present PODNet Paper at AAAI-MAKE 2020 on March 23

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Garrett Jares

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant Ritwik Bera will present a paper titled “PODNet: A Neural Network for Discovery of Plannable Options” at the AAAI-MAKE: Combining Machine Learning and Knowledge Engineering in Practice, AAAI Spring Symposium on March 23, 2020. Co-authored by researchers from the US Army Research Laboratory’s Human Research and Engineering Directorate, this continuing project investigates how to segment an unstructured set of demonstrated trajectories for option discovery. This enables learning from demonstration to perform multiple tasks and plan high-level trajectories based on the discovered option labels. This method is composed of several constituent networks that not only segment demonstrated trajectories into options, but concurrently trains an option dynamics model that can be used for downstream planning tasks and training on simulated rollouts to minimize interaction with the environment while the policy is maturing. The paper documenting this work is “PODNet: A Neural Network for Discovery of Plannable Options,” currently available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.00171.

Goecks to Present Cycle-of-Learning Paper at AAMAS 2020 on May 11

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Garrett Jares

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant Vinicius Goecks will present a paper on “Integrating Behavior Cloning and Reinforcement Learning for Improved Performance in Dense and Sparse Reward Environments” at the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems on May 11, 2020. Co-authored by researchers from the US Army Research Laboratory’s Human Research and Engineering Directorate, this continuing project investigates how to efficiently transition and update policies, trained initially with demonstrations, using off-policy actor-critic reinforcement learning. This method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques for combining behavior cloning and reinforcement learning for both dense and sparse reward scenarios. Results also suggest that directly including the behavior cloning loss on demonstration data helps to ensure stable learning and ground future policy updates. The paper documenting this work is “Integrating Behavior Cloning and Reinforcement Learning for Improved Performance in Dense and Sparse Reward Environments,” currently available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.04281.

Valasek Editor of new AIAA book on computational intelligence and autonomy for aerospace systems

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Garrett Jares

Dr. John Valasek, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and director of the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, has edited a new book titled Advances in Computational Intelligence and Autonomy for Aerospace Systems (AIAA Progress in Aeronautics and Astronautics Series, 2018). The book seeks to provide both the aerospace researcher and the practicing aerospace engineer with further insight into the latest innovative methods and approaches regarding intelligent and autonomous aerospace systems. Written by leading researchers in the field, it focuses on:

Intelligent Space Systems
Intelligent Validation and Verification Methods
Intelligent Health Monitoring
Intelligent Flight Control

Research advances in embedded computational intelligence, communication, control, and new mechanisms for sensing, actuation, and adaptation hold the promise to transform aerospace. The result will be air and space vehicles, propulsion systems, exploration systems, and vehicle management systems that respond more quickly, provide large-scale distributed coordination, work in dangerous or inaccessible environments, and augment human capabilities.

VSCL Students selected for Summer 2020 Internships

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Garrett Jares

Many students of the Texas A&M Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory have been selected for offsite internships for the Summer of 2020. 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 2020 include:

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and Ph.D. Student Ritwik Bera has been selected for a Summer 2020 internship at US Army Research Lab ’s Human Research and Engineering Directorate in Aberdeen, MD. Ritwik will be working as a Research Associate on the ARL-HRED initiative to investigate how humans can shape the behavior of autonomous machines driven by learning algorithms.

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and M.S. student Blake Krpec has been selected for a Summer 2020 internship at US Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, MD. Blake will be working as a Journeyman Research Fellow on the US Army initiative to investigate a potential target tracking /following system involving one UAS being able to detect another UAS, and navigate relative to said target. Blake has been a member of VSCL since Fall of 2016, where he supported flight test projects, sensor and hardware integration, aircraft performance, and other target tracking efforts.

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and Master of Science Student Morgan Wood has been selected for a Summer 2020 internship at VectorNav Technologies, Dallas, TX. Morgan will be working as a Navigation Engineer Intern. Morgan started working with VSCL in the Fall of 2019, with his major roles including research for Army Futures Command on coordinated maneuvering of air and ground vehicles.

VSCL undergraduate Hannah Lehman awarded Texas A&M University College of Engineering Graduate Merit Fellowship for 2020- 2023

Posted on February 9, 2020 by Garrett Jares

Hannah Lehman ‘20, a senior in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and an undergraduate research assistant of the Texas A&M Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, has been awarded the Texas A&M University College of Engineering Graduate Merit Fellowship for 2020- 2023. This highly competitive fellowship funds $30,000 per year for 3-4 years (Ph.D.) in addition to health insurance costs, and tuition and fees. All competitive domestic applicants who applied for a fall semester matriculation are considered for this prestigious fellowship. One student is awarded for each participating department.

Dr. John Valasek will serve as her research Advisor and Chair of dissertation committee. As a Graduate Research Assistant Hannah will research Tightly Integrated Navigation and Guidance for Multiple Autonomous Agents, which is sponsored by Sandia National Laboratory. She will also do a 2020 summer internship at Sandia National Laboratory.

Hannah has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2017, focusing on human-machine interaction and the control of UAS with Machine Learning. She will graduate with the B.S. degree in aerospace engineering as a University Scholar, University Honors, and Engineering Honors in May 2020. She has been awarded the 2019/2020 AIAA Foundation Cary Spitzer Digital Avionics Scholarship, the 2019 Gathright Phi Kappa Phi Outstanding Junior in the College of Engineering, and placed 1^st in the 2018 AIAA Region IV Student Paper Conference.

Vinicius G. Goecks Defends Ph.D. Dissertation on Wednesday, 4 December 2019

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Garrett Jares

Vinicius G. Goecks (B.S. Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil), M.S. Texas A&M University) successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled “Human-In-The-Loop Methods For Data-Driven And Reinforcement Learning Systems”. This work is supported by the Army Research Laboratory, Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD. Vinicius is a recipient of a graduate research fellowship sponsored by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) to research novel forms of human-robot interaction to enable humans to train intelligent robotic agents in real-time to perform desired tasks. He spent three consecutive summer internships in HRED working on it. Vinicius has accepted a Post-Doctoral research position at HRED. Vinicius is currently a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Intelligent Systems Technical Committee, and his main research interests are reinforcement learning, computer vision, and data-driven controllers applied to unmanned air systems. Congratulations Vinicius, all of VSCL is very proud of you and your accomplishments!

Four New Graduate Students Join VSCL in Fall 2019

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Garrett Jares

VSCL is proud to welcome four new graduate research assistants:

Ritwik Bera is a Ph.D. student in the aerospace engineering department. He graduated with the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2018. During his undergraduate studies, Ritwik worked on modelling multi-agent systems using differential game theory. He also interned at VSCL in 2017, working on two time-scale control systems at the time. At VSCL, Ritwik works on human-in-the-loop learning to train autonomous systems to perform various tasks. Ritwik has been primarily focused on making human-in-the-loop learning scalable for real-time learning on hardware as well as developing unsupervised learning techniques to help agents learn macro-behaviors from human demonstrations.

Kameron Eves is a Ph.D. student in the aerospace engineering department. He graduated from Brigham Young University (BYU) with a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering. At BYU, Kameron worked in the Multiple Agent Intelligent Coordination and Control (MAGICC) laboratory. As part of this research, Kameron helped to develop a ground based optical tracking and imaging system capable of estimating an aircraft’s pose. In the VSCL, Kameron will work to develop the capabilities necessary for autonomous reconnaissance in military settings. This project is a partnership with the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University. Kameron’s research interests include reinforcement learning, autonomous control, and vehicle dynamics.

Blake Krpec is a Masters of Science student in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory. He has been working with his advisor, Dr. John Valasek, since the fall semester of his sophomore year (Fall 2016) as an undergraduate research assistant. During this time he assisted in flight test validation of UAS (unmanned air systems), as well as the integration of various sensors and on board computers. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University in May 2019 and began working on his masters in August 2019. In June of 2019, Blake was selected to be a Journeyman Fellow for the Army Research Lab. The work for this fellowship includes using computer vision control techniques to enable UAS to autonomously detect and navigate relative to the detected UAS. Blake’s main research interests include computer vision, controls using computer vision, and traditional controls applied to unmanned air systems.

Morgan Wood is an M.S. student in the aerospace engineering department. He earned the Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point. While in school, he studied engineering abroad at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, soloed in a Schweizer H300 helicopter at the University of North Dakota, and conducted research for BAE Systems as the lead structural designer to fabricate and employ a working exoskeleton for the Air Force Research Laboratory Rapid Reaction Challenge at Kirtland Air Force Base, NM. After graduation in 2011, Morgan was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army and served for eight years in Army Aviation as an AH-64D Apache Helicopter aviator.

VSCL undergraduate Hannah Lehman to pursue Ph.D. in aerospace engineering starting Fall 2020

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Garrett Jares

Hannah Lehman ‘20, a senior in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and an undergraduate research assistant of the Texas A&M Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, has accepted a Graduate Research Fellowship and will join the Ph.D. program in aerospace engineering in Fall 2020. Dr. John Valasek will serve as her research Advisor and Chair of dissertation committee. As a Graduate Research Assistant Hannah will research Tightly Integrated Navigation and Guidance for Multiple Autonomous Agents, which is sponsored by Sandia National Laboratory. She will also do a 2020 summer internship at Sandia National Laboratory.

Valasek Invited Panelist in Innovation at Startup Speed: Vehicle Sensor Systems, at Capital Factory

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Garrett Jares

Dr. John Valasek, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and director of the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, was in invited panelist on the topic of Innovation at Startup Speed: Vehicle Sensor Systems, Capital Factory, Austin, TX, 26 June 2019. Sponsored by BAE Systems of Austin, TX, panelists in the session discussed the need and use for advanced sensor systems and how they pose a challenge for researchers, developers, and regulators who are tasked with evaluating those systems and putting them into the field.

Research Goal