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.

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

PI M. Ilhan Akbas

​​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.

Researchers

  • M. Ilhan Akbas

    M. Ilhan Akbas

    Department
    Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept
    Degrees
    Ph.D., University of Central Florida
  • Laxima Niure Kandel

    Laxima Niure Kandel

    Department
    Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept
    Degrees
    Ph.D., Stevens Institute of Technology
    M.S., University of Essex