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VSCL hosted Dr. Robert Abrose, Professor in the Texas A&M Department of Mechanical Engineering and Director for Space and Robotics at the Bush Combat Development Complex, at the Texas A&M University UAS Flight Testing Facility at RELLIS Campus. Dr. Ambrose met with Lab Director Dr. John Valasek and several VSCL Graduate Students. Dr. Ambrose and VSCL discussed UAS autonomy research and flight testing capabilities to identify points for potential  collaboration with the Bush Combat Development Complex.

VSCL hosted Dr. Steve Nogar, Research Engineer at the Army Research Laboratory, at the Texas A&M University UAS Flight Testing Facility at RELLIS Campus.  Dr. Nogar met with VSCL lab director Dr. John Valasek and VSCL graduate students Kameron Eves, Garrett Jares, Ian Holmes, Esteban Gomez, and Chris Leshikar about the autonomous control of UAS research that VSCL conducts at the flight testing facility and toured the grounds.

VSCL graduate student Ritwik Bera has graduated with his Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Ritwik successfully defended his thesis “A Modular Framework for Training Autonomous Systems via Human Interaction” in December 2021. He is now working with Zoox in Foster CIty, CA as a Software Engineer in the Planning and Control department working on trajectory generation algorithms. Ritwik joined VSCL in 2019 after having spent a summer working with the lab in 2017 and has focused much of his work on human-in-the-loop learning to train autonomous systems to perform various tasks. Ritwik has also led the efforts for the Enhancing the Cycle-of-Learning for Autonomous Systems to Facilitate Human-Agent Teaming project.

 

 

 

VSCL graduate student Shelby Hackett has graduated with her Master of Engineering in Aerospace Engineering. Shelby will be going to work for Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA where she will be a part of the guidance, navigation, and control systems group and will aid in various space missions. Shelby has been a member of VSCL since Fall 2020 and has worked on a number of projects including Tightly Integrated Navigation and Guidance for Multiple Autonomous Agents. She has also served as a Teaching Assistant for AERO 321: Dynamics of Aerospace Vehicles and aided undergraduate students in learning aircraft stability and control.

 

 

 

 

VSCL graduate student Blake Krpec has graduated with his Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Blake successfully defended his thesis “Vision-Based Marker-Less Landing of a UAS On a Moving Ground Vehicle” in March 2022. He is now working as an Engineer in the Applied Sensing Department for Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX. Blake began working with VSCL during the fall semester of his sophomore year (Fall 2016) as an undergraduate research assistant and began working on his masters in August 2019. Blake was selected to be a Journeyman Fellow for the Army Research Lab and his main research interests include computer vision, controls using computer vision, and traditional controls applied to unmanned air systems

 

 

 

VSCL undergraduate research assistant Dakota Kridler has graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Dakota will be working as a Flight Test & Systems Engineer for Albers Aerospace in McKinney, TX. He has been working with VSCL since January 2019 and has worked to develop the air vehicle autonomy on the Agile Technology Development (ATD) – Air-Ground Coordinated Teaming project. Dakota is also a US Army veteran who served from 2012 to 2017 as an Infantryman during the Inherent Resolve Campaign.

 

 

 

 

VSCL undergraduate research assistant Luke Moy has graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Luke will be working as an R&D Engineer 1 at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Luke has been a member of VSCL since August 2020 and has been involved in much of the flight testing operations at RELLIS Campus. Luke has also been an integral part of the Tightly Integrated Navigation and Guidance for Multiple Autonomous Agents project.

Many students of the Texas A&M Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory have been selected for offsite internships for the Summer of 2022. 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 2022 include:

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant Connor Atkins has been selected for a Summer 2022 internship with Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM. Connor will be working as a Graduate Student Intern and assisting with documentation/procedure and testing of new systems within the physics lab. Connor has been a member of VSCL since 2018 and has worked on numerous projects. Currently, he is working with the flight testing group at the RELLIS Campus. Having experience with both the software and hardware sides of the vehicles, he performs preflight maintenance and aids in the testing of a variety of UAS that VSCL handles.

 

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant Alex Gross has been selected for a Summer 2022 internship at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. Alex will be working as a Research & Development Intern focusing on applying machine learning to hypersonic applications. Alex is a Junior and has been a member of VSCL since 2020. He has focused his research on UAS autonomous guidance and landing, embedded systems, and user-interface integration.

 

 

 

 

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and Ph.D Student Hannah Lehman has been selected for a Summer 2022 research internship at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. Hannah has been working as a Year-Round Research & Development Intern since 2020, with a principal focus of applying machine learning to defense vehicles. Hannah started working with VSCL as an undergraduate in the Spring of 2017, with her major roles including managing the flight simulator lab and performing research into reinforcement learning for use onboard aircraft. Hannah graduated with her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in May 2020 and and continued with VSCL to pursue her Ph.D.

 

 

 

 

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and M.S. Student Cassie-Kay McQuinn has been selected for a Summer 2022 research internship at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. Cassie will be a Research and Development Intern with a focus of applying autonomy solutions to advance the national security mission. Cassie has been a member of VSCL since Spring 2021 and joined as a M.S. student in the Spring 2022 semester. Cassie-Kay’s main interests include flight test engineering, aircraft dynamics, and system identification.

 

 

 

 

 

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant Md Nazmus Sunbeam has been selected for a Summer 2022 internship with the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, MD. Sunbeam will be working as a Summer Student Researcher with the Human Research and Engineering Directorate developing algorithms and extensions for Cycle-of-Learning. Cycle-of-Learning is a framework for quick training of AI agents through human interaction. Sunbeam has been a member of VSCL: since August 2021. His research has focused on advancing the Cycle-of-Learning by investigating the use of similarity metrics.

 

 

 

 

 

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant Carla Zaramella has been selected for a Summer 2022 internship at Raytheon Technologies in Tewksbury MA. Carla will be working as a Whole Life Program – Systems Engineering Intern in RTX Missiles and Defense with a team to ensure that hardware and systems are effective, reliable and maintainable. Carla is a Sophomore and has been a member of VSCL since January of 2022 and has been involved in flight testing and supporting research for system identification.

 

 

 

 

VSCL student Blake Krpec, who will graduate with his Master of Science degree in May 2022, has defended his thesis “Vision-Based Marker-Less Landing of a UAS On a Moving Ground Vehicle”.  Blake’s defense had 34 people in attendance including many in attendance from the Army Research Lab.  His committee is Drs. Reza Langari, Manoranjan Majji, Srikanth Saripalli, and Stephen Nogar (special committee member from Army Research Laboratory and the Technical Monitor). His research is supported as a Journeyman Fellow by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) on an Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Fellowship. Blake has been working with VSCL for 7 years after joining as a freshman. After graduation, Blake will work with Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX.

Dr. Sangwoo Moon, postdoctoral researcher in VSCL, has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Moon will be working with the JPL Robotics Group, Robotic Aerial Mobility. His work at JPL will be mainly focused on communication-aware decision making and perception approaches for multi-robot systems. The work will include software development/integration for data fusion and multi-level planning/control, simulation verification/validation to assess the developed approaches, and hardware demonstration and evaluation with heterogeneous multi-robot systems with harsh communication environments.

Dr. Moon has worked with VSCL since March 2021. As a research engineer, he was involved in the hardware/software implementation for large hexacopter platforms. He particularly developed specialized hardware and software components for the vehicles consisting of a battery monitoring system, onboard computer set up for planning and guidance, and terrain-following algorithms. He worked with VSCL flight crews to evaluate the vehicles, in which his team including himself took flight tests of over 200 sorties and 60 hours of flight time. He contributed to the successful demonstration of a cooperative zone recon mission with four large hexarotors for searching unknown ground moving targets.

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.

Maison Clouatre is an incoming Ph.D. student in the aerospace engineering department. He will graduate in May 2022 with a double major in electrical engineering and mathematics from Mercer University. As an undergraduate, Clouatre held visiting research positions in the Electronic Systems (ELSYS) Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory (VSCL) at Texas A&M University, and the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research interests lay at the intersection of control theory, optimization, and learning, and he focuses on applying his theory to the fields of quantum information science and aerospace engineering. Clouatre is both a Goldwater Scholar and Stamps Scholar. At VSCL, Clouatre will research quantum control and learning for quantum dynamics.

Cassie-Kay McQuinn ’21 is an M.S. student in the aerospace engineering department. Cassie-Kay has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2021, working in system identification. She will graduate in December from Texas A&M University with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering with Engineering Honors. In addition to completing Engineering Honors, she is a Presidential Endowed Scholar, the 2021 Aerospace Engineering Advisory Board Scholarship recipient, and has earned a certificate of Holistic Leadership in Engineering through completion of the Zachry Leadership Program. She is the current Vice President of the Texas A&M chapter of the Sigma Gamma Tau Aerospace Engineering Honor Society. As an undergraduate she interned with L3Harris Technologies working in the Structural Analysis and Structural Design departments. Cassie-Kay’s main interests include flight test engineering, aircraft dynamics and system identification.

Dr. John Valasek, Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and Director of the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, gave a virtual seminar titled “Combining Human Demonstrations and Interventions for Safe Training of Autonomous Systems in Real-Time” for the AI Seminar Series hosted by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  The date of the seminar was 18 August 2021.

Cycle-of-Learning (CoL) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQwsk6kZfok) was presented as a framework using an actor-critic architecture with a loss function that combines behavior cloning and 1-step Q-learning losses with an off-policy pre-training step from human demonstrations.  This enables transition from behavior cloning to reinforcement learning without performance degradation and improves reinforcement learning in terms of overall performance and training time.  This approach is shown to outperform state-of-the-art techniques for combining behavior cloning and reinforcement learning, for both dense and sparse reward scenarios. Results are presented for haptic and eye tracking input modalities, and suggest that directly including the behavior cloning loss on demonstration data helps to ensure stable learning and ground future policy updates.