Challenges and Directions in Guidance, Navigation and Control of Autonomous Aerospace Vehicles

Autonomous aerospace vehicles have applications in diverse fields like space exploration, infrastructure inspection, and air taxi. However, in spite of several years of research on autonomy of aerospace vehicles, substantial challenges remain in achieving safe and reliable autonomy. The biggest challenges in integrating autonomous aerospace vehicles into human society have to do with dynamic uncertainties due to natural (environmental) effects and safety and reliability during human interactions. Recent advances in learning-based and data-enabled control and navigation have made it possible to deal with these challenges to some extent. However, further advances are needed in the coming decades, to meet the stringent requirements of safety and reliability for autonomous aerospace vehicles operating in the presence of humans. This talk explores the challenges specific to guidance, navigation and control (GNC) of autonomous aerospace vehicles and how my research has handled these challenges. A key feature of this research is the stress on nonlinear stability and robustness of GNC algorithms for autonomous aerospace vehicles in the presence of actuator constraints, sensor and onboard processor capabilities, and dynamic (time-varying) uncertain inputs or disturbances. Future directions that include learning-based control for autonomy of aerospace vehicles are also presented.

Amit Sanyal obtained the BTech degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1999. He completed his MS in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A& M University in 2001, where he received the Distinguished Graduate Student Masters Research Award. He obtained his PhD in Aerospace Engineering and MS in Mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2004 and 2005 respectively, and was recipient of an Engineering Academic Scholar Certificate. After his post-doctoral research at Arizona State University in 2005-2006, he joined the faculty in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hawaii in 2007. He has been a faculty in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at New Mexico State University (2010-2015), and is currently a faculty in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Syracuse University. He develops and applies techniques from geometric mechanics, nonlinear and geometric control, and continuous and discrete-time Lagrangian/Hamiltonian systems, to dynamics modeling, guidance, navigation, and control of unmanned and autonomous systems. He is an associate fellow of AIAA, a senior member of IEEE, and a member of ASME and SIAM. His research has been supported by NSF, NASA, and AFOSR, and he co-founded Akrobotix LLC, an aerospace start-up company.