VSCL student Ritwik Bera, who will graduate with his Master of Science degree in May 2022, has defended his thesis “A Modular Framework for Training Autonomous Systems via Human Interaction”. Bera joined VSCL in 2019 after having spent a summer working with the lab in 2017. Bera previously participated in summer a internships at Zoox in Summer 2021. After graduation, Bera will work with Zoox in Foster CIty, CA as a Software Engineer in the Planning and Control department working on trajectory generation algorithms.
Defense
The Number 50: VSCL Graduate Students Achieve Graduate Degree Milestone
The 50th graduate degree has been earned by a VSCL graduate student. Jin Suzuki earned the first degree, an M.S. in 1997, and Dr. Vinicius Goecks earned the fiftieth degree, a Ph.D. in May 2020. Several VSCL graduates students have earned both the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees during this span, and Dr. Valasek has served as advisor to all 50 degrees. The list of students and dates can be viewed here.
Vinicius G. Goecks Defends Ph.D. Dissertation on Wednesday, 4 December 2019
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!
Han-Hsun “Jack” Lu Defends MS Thesis on Tuesday, 5 December 2017
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!
Joshua Harris Defends MS Thesis on Tuesday, 17 October 2017
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
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!
