research 6-DOF eVTOL Simulation & Adaptive Control Nonlinear simulation with MRAC, L1, LPV, Geometric, LQR, and H-infinity controllers validated through Lyapunov analysis and Monte Carlo studies Numerical Optimal Control of a UAM Vehicle Hermite-Simpson direct collocation with projected gradient descent for trajectory optimization of a full 12-state nonlinear quadrotor model — AOE 5404, Spring 2025 DRAGON eVTOL — Fixed-Wing to Multirotor Transition PX4 firmware modification, gain-scheduled LQR/PID transition control laws, and first demonstration of stable fixed-wing-to-multirotor flight Gradient Descent eVTOL Design Optimization Custom gradient descent with penalty method and BEMT-based propulsion model to minimize takeoff weight over wing area, rotor count, diameter, pitch, and cruise velocity LQR with L1 Adaptive Augmentation — Quadrotor Trajectory Tracking Full 6-DOF nonlinear quadrotor simulation with LQR baseline and L1 adaptive augmentation for circular trajectory tracking under Von Kármán atmospheric turbulence Sliding Mode Control of an Octarotor for Fault Tolerant Control Nonlinear sliding mode controller for an octarotor that maintains stable flight under single and dual rotor failures by exploiting actuator redundancy ROS 2 GNC Middleware with EKF Sensor Fusion Low-latency C++/Python ROS 2 middleware for time-synchronized multi-sensor acquisition with Extended Kalman Filter state estimation L1 Adaptive Control — Race Drone Testbed Custom race drone built as a high-bandwidth hardware testbed for validating L1 adaptive augmentation on a real agile platform Autonomous Path Planning — Scratch-built Autopilot End-to-end autonomous path planning implementation on a custom-built autopilot stack industry 500 lb Heavy-lift Multirotor UAV End-to-end technical ownership from motor and frame sizing through avionics integration, GNC commissioning, and first autonomous flight 1 kHz Multi-channel Propulsion Test Stand NI DAQ-based dynamometer capturing thrust, torque, RPM, phase current, and winding temperature at fidelity exceeding commercial dynamometers at the required scale Physics-based eVTOL Propulsion & Aerodynamic Models MATLAB state-space propulsion models, motor torque-speed curves, battery discharge models, and coupled airframe aerodynamics for eVTOL control law development other Rolls-Royce Viper Thermal Failure Investigation Aero-thermal failure analysis of the central bearing, identifying heat transfer breakdown at the bearing race as the primary failure driver Aerial Smoke Detection and Localization Hexacopter UAV platform for real-time aerial smoke detection and source localization using onboard sensing and computer vision
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