Students and faculty in the Department of Electrical, Computer, Software, and Systems Engineering are some of the more prolific researchers in the Embry-Riddle family. The department's research expenditures are nearly one-half those of the entire College of Engineering, with support from federal agencies including NSF, FAA, and NOAA as well as industry partners. The department is heavily involved in projects managed by ERAU's NEAR Lab and by the COE's Eagle Flight Research Center.

Strategic department research directions include three areas critical for the future of aerospace. These are:

  • Detect and avoid technologies for unmanned aircraft systems;
  • Assured systems for aerospace, including cybersecurity and development assurance;
  • Modeling and simulation for aviation and aerospace.

Detect and avoid technologies enable unmanned aircraft systems to "see and be seen" by other aircraft and by air traffic controllers on the ground. Of particular challenge is detect and avoid of uncooperative aircraft, those aircraft that aren't equipped to announce their position either automatically or in response to interrogations from the ground.

Assured systems are those that are robust in the face of cybersecurity challenges, with assured development being system design approaches that yield assured systems without high overhead.

Modeling and simulation for aviation involves everything from the logistics of getting passengers onto aircraft to planning how to get all air traffic around predicted bad weather without upsetting arrival times and locations.

1-10 of 23 results

  • Federal Aviation Administration - Aviation Ecosystem Cyber Security Data Science (CSDS)

    PI M. Ilhan Akbas

    CO-I Laxima Niure Kandel

    ​​To address these needs, the FAA NextGen Organization has established the CSDS research program with emphasis on discovery, assessment, adaptation, demonstration and transfer of cyber technology to enhance information cybersecurity for elements of the aviation ecosystem.

    Establishing cyber analytical capabilities that are common between various elements of the aviation ecosystem is an essential capability that needs to be developed and matured to allow efficient and synchronized use of common data sets, analytical tools and communication backbones across the entire aviation ecosystem. To address these needs, the FAA NextGen Organization has established the CSDS research program with emphasis on discovery, assessment, adaptation, demonstration and transfer of cyber technology to enhance information cybersecurity for elements of the aviation ecosystem. The research is focused on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) techniques to address these aviation ecosystem cybersecurity needs using customizable algorithms and tools. Our collaborators in this project include Astronautics, Collins Aerospace, GE Aerospace,  Gulfstream Aerospace, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Lab, The Boeing Company, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey United Airlines.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): A11L.UAS.97: Propose Right-of-Way Rules for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Operations and Safety Recommendations

    PI M. Ilhan Akbas

    The overall purpose of this project is to inform rulemaking and standards development regarding potential Right of Way (RoW) concepts for manned and unmanned aircraft in the low altitude environment. 



    The overall purpose of this project is to inform rulemaking and standards development regarding potential Right of Way (RoW) concepts for manned and unmanned aircraft in the low altitude environment. 

    There are various RoW standards, which apply to specific types of UAS. However, there is ambiguity for other UAS and rules have yet to be developed for interactions between two unmanned aircraft or for UAS swarms. RoW rules impact UAS Detect and Avoid (DAA) requirements and the development of industry standards. This research project explores RoW for diverse UAS operations and make safety-based recommendations for consideration by FAA and UAS standards bodies. Our collaborators in this project are University of North Dakota and University of Kansas.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Using Interpretable Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Validation of Autonomous Vehicle Decision Making in Simulation

    PI M. Ilhan Akbas

    ​Autonomous Vehicle Validation and Verification AV V&V testing produces multi-variate time series data as output, which is evaluated to determine testing coverage.

    Autonomous Vehicle Validation and Verification AV V&V testing produces multi-variate time series data as output, which is evaluated to determine testing coverage. The recent surge in interpretable Artificial Intelligence (AI) research has resulted in Python interfaces for modern interpretable AI implementations. In this project, various modern interpretable AI implementations will be applied to AV V&V testing data to interpret parameter impact, and generate an informative report of AV V&V scenario using data generated from a traffic simulator and AV V&V test scenarios.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • PolyVerif: Open-Source Environment for Autonomous Vehicle Validation and Verification

    PI M. Ilhan Akbas

    ​Validation and Verification (V&V) of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based cyber physical systems such as Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) is currently a vexing and unsolved problem.

    Validation and Verification (V&V) of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based cyber physical systems such as Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) is currently a vexing and unsolved problem. PolyVerif is an open-source solution focused on V&V researchers with the objective of accelerating the state-of-the-art for AV V&V research. PolyVerif provides an AI design and verification framework consisting of a digital twin creation process, an open-source AV engine, access to several open-source physics-based simulators, and open-source symbolic test generation engines. PolyVerif’s objective is to arm V&V researchers with a framework which extends the state-of-the-art on any one of the many major axes of interest and use the remainder of the infrastructure to quickly demonstrate the viability of their solution. 

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • TurtleTech: Sea Turtle Surveillance By Edge Computing on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

    PI M. Ilhan Akbas

    To better understand the behavior of multiple sea turtle species along Florida’s Space Coast, we teamed up with Northrop Grumman and the Brevard Zoo to launch a drone-based surveillance effort.

    To better understand the behavior of multiple sea turtle species along Florida’s Space Coast, we teamed up with Northrop Grumman and the Brevard Zoo to launch a drone-based surveillance effort. The Turtle Tech project, leveraging two different unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), aim to provide conservation insights by fine-tuning the operations and computer vision systems for identification of individual sea turtles, including their species, gender and even unique markings.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • FMSG: Cyber: Perceptual and Cognitive Additive Manufacturing (PCAM)

    PI Daewon Kim

    CO-I Eduardo Rojas

    ​This grant supports fundamental research on a radical transformation of additive manufacturing through digitally connecting machines, humans, and manufactured products.

    This grant supports fundamental research on a radical transformation of additive manufacturing through digitally connecting machines, humans, and manufactured products. Additive manufacturing has enabled a new paradigm shift from conventional design for manufacturing approaches into manufacturing for design. A fundamental change in additive manufacturing is necessary as we enter a new era of intelligent future manufacturing beyond additive manufacturing. A promising solution is the convergence of wireless embedded sensors with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) data processes, which can transform the way people interact with manufacturing processes, factory operations, optimizing efficiency, and anomaly system detection that could provide critical information about evaluated components and systems. This project opens a new transitional door to perceptive and cognitive additive manufacturing, enabling true internet of things and digital twin, connecting devices and machines in factories with robots, computers, and humans, and every product we manufacture in factories. The grant will also support educational activities to upskill the manufacturing workforce, K-12, undergraduate and graduate students, and the public, significantly influencing diverse populations of all ages and backgrounds.

    Transformation to cyber-physical production manufacturing demands advanced process monitoring through distributed sensing beyond the current state of digitally connected machines and robots collaborating with humans. This project seeks to enable unprecedented wireless fingerprinting and sensing of additively manufactured parts by embedding wireless sensors and performing predictive analysis and health monitoring using AI and ML techniques. This project proposes a holistic approach involving four core research tasks: 1) to study the effects of embedding sensors during additive manufacturing; 2) to design embeddable acoustic sensors and insert them during the manufacturing process to read physical parameters; 3) to prove that embedded passive sensor signals can be sensed wirelessly using millimeter-wave antennas, and 4) to quickly monitor and evaluate the state of manufactured products using ML algorithms. This project has the potential to enable next-generation cyber-physical production systems.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Efficient Management of Certificate Revocation List (CRL)

    PI Shafika Showkat Moni

    Most of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) based security and privacy solutions for VANETs use pseudonyms where each vehicle gets multiple identities to improve privacy significantly.

    Most of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) based security and privacy solutions for VANETs use pseudonyms where each vehicle gets multiple identities to improve privacy significantly. A vehicle needs 720 pseudonyms in 24 hours and 262,800 pseudonyms in 1 year, according to the US-based SAE J2735 standard. Trusted Authority (TA) revokes all the pseudonyms assigned to a malicious vehicle and stores them in the CRL. However, the overhead of maintaining such a large volume of identities is overwhelming for traditional CRL-based solutions. In turn, it incurs a higher delay to update and broadcast the CRL periodically. We have designed a novel approach by leveraging the Cuckoo Filter to reduce the storage, computation, and communication overhead associated with the CRL in VANET. The cuckoo filter contains only one entry for all pseudonyms of a revoked vehicle, thereby minimizing the overhead associated with CRL verification. Our scheme also provides an efficient lookup operation for vehicles and Road Side Units (RSUs) in a Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) scenario.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • Privacy-Preserving Authentication Scheme

    PI Shafika Showkat Moni

    This research project focuses on designing efficient privacy-preserving authentication schemes to reduce the communication and computation overhead related to authenticating entities in VANET.

    This research project focuses on designing efficient privacy-preserving authentication schemes to reduce the communication and computation overhead related to authenticating entities in VANET. We have exploited Merkle Hash Tree and Modified Merkle Patricia Trie (MMPT) to overcome the performance limitations of the conventional approach of authentication, such as the ECDSA algorithm for efficient authentication of Road Side Units (RSUs) and Vehicles in VANET. A detailed security analysis is carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of our authentication scheme against message modification attacks, replay attacks, and message injection attacks. Performance evaluation also shows that the proposed scheme has a significantly lower authentication overhead than other related schemes. 

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • NSF REU Site: Cybersecurity Research of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

    PI Laxima Niure Kandel

    CO-I M. Ilhan Akbas

    ​This funding institutes a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). Each year, over the summer, ten highly motivated undergraduates will conduct an intense 10-week Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) cybersecurity research program complemented by professional development activities that prepare them for future cybersecurity careers and graduate schools.

    This funding institutes a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). Each year, over the summer, ten highly motivated undergraduates will conduct an intense 10-week Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) cybersecurity research program complemented by professional development activities that prepare them for future cybersecurity careers and graduate schools. Students will research existing UAV cyber threats and mitigation strategies and explore new techniques and algorithms to safeguard UAV systems. The REU program will focus on providing unparalleled opportunities for undergraduate students, especially those from underrepresented and minority groups and from institutions with limited resources, by engaging them in real-world cybersecurity research of UAVs. Through small-group, high-quality mentoring practices, the REU training will not only aid in enhancing the safety and security of UAVs in personal and commercial applications but will also build research confidence among REU participants.

    The overall objective of this project is to immerse undergraduate students in research-intensive training in the cybersecurity field and encourage them to think creatively and independently through hands-on project activities. REU participants will be engaged in faculty-led projects such as UAV cyber-attacks, UAV cyber defense mechanisms, privacy protection methods for UAV communications, and Physical Layer-based cybersecurity. They will participate in activities that range from literature reviews, technical seminars, and workshops to the preparation, presentation, and dissemination of research findings. The three major goals of the REU Site are: (1) to expose undergraduate students to a variety of cybersecurity projects that are bound to build the interest, skills, and knowledge necessary to pursue cybersecurity careers; (2) to increase the number of underrepresented undergraduates in cybersecurity and STEM fields through diversity recruitment emphasis, and (3) to provide undergraduate students with strong professional skills for their future careers and graduate schools. The REU Site will leverage ERAUs? state-of-the-art facilities, research labs, and faculty expertise to promote interest in cybersecurity and develop research skills of the undergraduate students which, in turn, will contribute towards cybersecurity education, training, and workforce development.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

  • CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: High-skilled Workforce Development for the Aviation and Aerospace Cybersecurity Domains

    PI Omar Ochoa

    CO-I Keith Garfield

    CO-I Laxima Niure Kandel

    CO-I Krishna Sampigethaya

    This project promotes workforce development in this vital sector by building on undergraduate and graduate cybersecurity programs at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), where both ERAU campuses (Daytona Beach, FL and Prescott, AZ) have a history of collaborative education and research activities within the aviation and aerospace cybersecurity domain. 



    Aviation and aerospace cybersecurity is of critical importance to the Nation. As a key component of the overall U.S. transportation infrastructure, it protects people and contributes to American prosperity and leadership. This project promotes workforce development in this vital sector by building on undergraduate and graduate cybersecurity programs at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), where both ERAU campuses (Daytona Beach, FL and Prescott, AZ) have a history of collaborative education and research activities within the aviation and aerospace cybersecurity domain. Known locally as "Cyber Eagles," the project will advance the collaboration ecosystem across education programs and research centers to prepare students for productive cybersecurity careers and leadership roles in federal and state agencies. The program will recruit diverse scholars and create a supportive environment through effective mentorship, a well-developed curriculum, student involvement activities, and research experiences. These project components will help establish a pathway that enables students to participate in an environment where they can excel and enter a rewarding career in government aviation and aerospace administration agencies.

    The project aims to develop a high-skilled workforce to cover the Nation’s needs in the area of aviation and aerospace cybersecurity, focusing on the safety-criticality aspects of airborne systems and the protection of associated hardware and software assets. The project will fund 20 scholarships to students over a five-year period. Student scholars will benefit from the strong ties that ERAU has with Federal and state aviation and transportation administration agencies and the aviation and aerospace industry. Scholars will have the opportunity to meet and learn from top cybersecurity engineers and managers from government and industry through aviation and aerospace-themed projects, events, and symposia hosted by ERAU. Furthermore, the project will take advantage of on-site expertise at ERAU in all computation and communication services related to flight operations, including airborne hardware and software, avionics equipment, and network and communication data links among aircraft, ground stations, radar systems, and satellite systems. This expertise places the scholarship students in a unique position to contribute to cybersecurity protection during the design, development, and operation stages of systems specific for the aviation and aerospace domain.

    This project is supported by the CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, which funds proposals establishing or continuing scholarship programs in cybersecurity and aligns with the U.S. National Cyber Strategy to develop a superior cybersecurity workforce. Following graduation, scholarship recipients are required to work in cybersecurity for a Federal, state, local, or tribal Government organization for the same duration as their scholarship support.

    Categories: Faculty-Staff

1-10 of 23 results