Presentations

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.

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.

Dr. John Valasek, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and director of the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, was an invited Firestarter Presenter on the topic of Payload & Mission Management for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Missions. Sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories, the Autonomy for Hypersonics (A4H) Field Day was held on 18-19 April 2019, Albuquerque, NM. The A4H Mission Campaign seeks to conduct groundbreaking autonomy research in collaboration with academic and industrial partners to address critical national security issues.

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 Verification and Validation in the Age of Autonomy at the 2019 AIAA SciTech Conference, 10 January 2019, San Diego, CA.

Panelists in the session discussed the V&V of autonomous systems and how they pose a challenge for regulators and others tasked with evaluating those systems.  As the second and third waves of autonomy become reality, concerns arise as to the safety and reliability of new technologies that leverage these capabilities. Methods for verification and validation of software that enable autonomous systems must be developed to support new certification processes. For safety critical systems, ethical issues regarding machine decision making and the role of human-on-the-loop paradigms must be addressed. For defense applications, mission assurance will be a significant driving factor in certifying systems for deployment. How can government authorities, companies, and the general public be assured that new, autonomous technologies are reliable?

In the webinar recording below please go to 41:00 to see Dr. Valasek’s introductory presentation, before the Q&A with the audience begins:  https://livestream.com/AIAAvideo/scitech2019/videos/185656997

Details of the session and participants can be found here:

https://scitech.aiaa.org/Intelligent-Systems-Create-Validation-Challenges/

 

VSCL hosted Dr. Jaret Riddick, Director of the Army Research Laboratory, and Dr. Bryan Glaz, Chief Scientist of the Army Research Laboratory at the Texas A&M University UAS Flight Testing Facility at RELLIS Campus.  Dr. Jaret Riddick and Dr. Bryan Glaz spoke with VSCL lab director Dr. John Valasek and VSCL graduate student Vinicius G. Goecks about the work VSCL completes at the flight testing facility and toured the grounds.

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General John Murray and his staff recently got their first chance to size up the research possibilities in College Station.  As part of that visit, General Murray was shown the UAS flight testing activities of VSCL, during a research test flight on INS performance being conducted under the sponsorship of VectorNav Technologies, LLC.

The full article can be found on Texas Monthly, here.

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.