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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!

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.

Tiffany Williamson ‘07, a former member of the Texas A&M Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory and currently Senior Engineering Manager of Advanced Flightdeck Research and Concept Development at Collins Aerospace, is the 2019 Emerging Technology Leader of the Year from the Technology Association of Iowa.  The most prestigious recognition for Iowa’s technology industry, The Prometheus Awards presented by LWBJ brings together leaders from technology, business, education and government to celebrate the year’s most momentous innovations. The awards acknowledge individuals and companies impacting Iowa’s $11 billion technology industry, which accounts for 8.8 percent of the state’s GDP and employs over 88,400 workers. Finalists and award winners epitomize the great talent, companies and communities solidifying Iowa’s reputation as a technology state.  Finalists were selected based on their contributions to Iowa’s technology community through innovation, development of creative solutions, and demonstration of industry leadership.  Congratulations Tiffany, VSCL is very proud of you and your accomplishments!

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The Vehicle Systems and Control Laboratory celebrated end of semester lunch at Mad Taco.

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and Ph.D. Student Vinicius G. Goecks has been selected for a Summer 2019 internship at the US Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, MD. Vinicius will be working as a Research Fellow on the US Army initiative to investigate how efficiently transition and update policies/controllers, trained initially with human demonstrations, using off-policy actor-critic reinforcement learning in the Cycle-of-Learning. 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 Undergraduate Research Assistant Student Hannah Lehman has been selected for a Summer 2019 research internship as part of the NSF funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. Hannah will be working as a Research Intern, with a principal focus of facilitating multi agent machine learning across heterogeneous agents. Hannah started working with VSCL 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.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant and B.S. Aerospace Engineering student Brandon Lansdell spent the Summer of 2018 and 2019 at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Grand Prairie, TX working as a Systems Engineer on the PAC-3 Missile Defense Program. During his time there, he has worked in simulation and algorithm development, as well as test operations. Brandon has been an active member of VSCL since Spring 2018, focusing on a multi agent architecture system created by VSCL students called CLARK.

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and M.S. Aerospace Engineering student Blake Krpec was selected to visit US Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, MD during summer 2019. Blake will be visiting for 2 weeks where he will work with engineers at Army Research Lab on developing autonomous vehicle systems. He 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 revied his bachelor’s of science from A&M in Aerospace Engineering in May 2019, and has been a member of VSCL since Fall of 2016. Blake supported flight test projects, sensor and hardware integration, aircraft performance, and other target tracking efforts.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant and B.S. Computer Engineering Student Mia Brown has been selected for a Summer 2019 internship at Dell Technologies in Round Rock, TX. Mia will be working as an Enterprise Security Analyst Intern, where she will be analyzing the security procedures for internal products at Dell Technologies. Mia started working with VSCL in the Spring of 2017, with her major roles including working in the Texas A&M University Engineering Flight Simulator and helping to develop a means for evaluating human factors aspects for Head Mounted Displays (HMD) for Enhanced Vision System technologies.

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant and Ph.D. Student Garrett Jares has been selected for a Summer 2019 Internship with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Garrett will be working as a Year-Round Graduate Student Intern – R&D with the Navigation, Guidance, & Control Organization. Garrett has been a member of VSCL since Fall 2018, focusing his work on UAS embedded systems, flight operations, and cybersecurity for UAS. He is also the lead engineer in the engineering flight simulator lab.

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.

VSCL Graduate Research Assistant Vinicius Goecks presented a paper on Cycle-of-Learning for Autonomous Systems from Human Interaction at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence AAAI-19 on 31 January. Co-authored by researchers from the US Army Research Laboratory’s Human Research and Engineering Directorate, this continuing project investigates how to utilize different forms of human interaction to safely train autonomous systems in real-time by learning from both human demonstrations and interventions. This method improves task completion performance for the same amount of human interaction when compared to learning from demonstrations alone, while also requiring on average 32% fewer data to achieve that performance. This provides evidence that combining multiple modes of human interaction can increase both the training speed and overall performance of policies for autonomous systems. The paper documenting this work is “Efficiently Combining Human Demonstrations and Interventions for Safe Training of Autonomous Systems in Real-Time,” AAAI-2019-6613.

 

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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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!

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!