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.
FMSG: Cyber: Perceptual and Cognitive Additive Manufacturing (PCAM)
PI Daewon Kim
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.
Researchers
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- Department
- Aerospace Engineering Department
- Degrees
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Ph.D., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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- Department
- Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept
- Degrees
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Ph.D., M.S., University of South Florida