UTARI Seminar is held the last Friday of each month at 12:00PM (noon). Each seminar highlights a different speaker who will discuss their latest research projects, cutting-edge technology or what is happening within certain technological industries. These industries include biomedical technologies or microsystems, assistive technologies, automation and intelligent systems, unmanned systems, advanced manufacturing and composite materials.
Speaker
Dr. Yan Wan
Topic
Co-Design of Networking and Decentralized Control to Enable UAV Networks in an Uncertain Airspace
Abstract
UAV networks that utilize UAV-to-UAV communication for information exchange, safe maneuvering, and coordination for time-critical missions have come to the forefront of research. Although the advantages of unmanned UAV networks (transportability, wide coverage, unmanned maneuvering, low latency, and flexibility) allow broad novel civilian applications, UAV networks do not yet exist in the National Airspace System. New technical challenges need to be conquered, summarized as mobility (frequent network topology variation), safety (stringent safety requirement of aerial maneuvers), and uncertainty (the sharing of resource-constrained uncertain airspace). We will discuss an innovative theoretical research paradigm to tackle the new challenges. Departing from the constrained design perspective, the paradigm proactively exploits the constraints, uncertainty, and new structures with information to enable high-performance designs. In particular, uncertainty-exploiting decentralized control facilitates robust networking, and practical networking techniques facilitate fast decentralized control under uncertainty.
Bio
Dr. Yan Wan is currently an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University in 2009 and then postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie in developing fundamental theories and tools for the modeling, evaluation, and control tasks in large-scale dynamic networks and cyber-physical systems, with applications to air traffic management, airborne networking, systems biology, and complex information systems. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and MITRE Corporation as subcontracts from Federal Aviation Administration. Dr. Wan’s research has led to over 120 publications and successful technology transfer outcomes. Her contributions to the field of air traffic management, airborne networking, and general cyber-physical systems have been recognized by several prestigious awards, including the National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, RTCA William E. Jackson Award, U.S. Ignite and GENI demonstration awards, IEEE WCNC Best Paper Award, UNT Early Career Award for Research and Creativity, and Tech Titan of the Future – University Level Award.
Date
Friday, August 25, 2017
Time
12pm (noon)-1pm
Location
7300 Jack Newell Boulevard South
Fort Worth, TX 76118-7115
817-272-5900
utari.uta.edu