Autonomous Vehicle Systems

Staff: Dr David Anderson, Dr Eric Gillies, Dr Jongrae Kim, Dr Euan McGookin and Dr Douglas Thomson

The Division of Aerospace Sciences has expertise and experience in the study of autonomous vehicles including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), biologically inspired vehicles and Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGVs). Associated research activities within the division cover everything from simulation, control and navigation system design to hardware implementation and practical vehicle trials.  

In addition, there is extensive research into the coordinated guidance and control of multi-vehicle and multi-platform systems.  Autonomous micro-UAV systems have been identified worldwide by both government and industrial organisations as a critical future aerospace technology due to the vast number of potential application areas. Examples include local, squad-level tactical surveillance in the context of military or homeland security operations to locating survivors following major disasters to more common roles in surveying, pipeline inspection and crop monitoring. We conduct research funded by both research councils and industry in the areas of aerospace surveillance, survivability and simulation. Ongoing research projects include vision-based control, nonlinear guidance and flight control, complex multi-agent multi-fidelity simulation and micro and nano-UAV vehicle design.

Facilities supporting our research include a well equipped mini-UAV lab with indoor flying area, autonomous underwater vehicle development lab and a sight-line control lab.