New UAS Applications
Professor Woosoon Yim of the department of mechanical engineering is presently conducting research on a robotic aerial platform that operates autonomously in GPS-denied environments, such as caves, forests, and other urban structures like buildings and tunnels. The drone’s research team includes one undergraduate and one graduate student, each tasked with separate duties – custom aerial platform fabrication, on-board sensor-based autonomous flight controller design, and implementation in the mock-up flight testing facility located in the 51ԹϺ’s College of Engineering.
Public Opinion Regarding UAS Usage and Surveillance Issues
Faculty members in the criminal justice department, including Joel Lieberman, Terry Miethe and Emily Troshynski, along with doctoral students Mari Sakiyama and Milia Heen are involved in a research program exploring Public Attitudes on Using Drone Technology for Visual Surveillance Activities. They have recently published several Research in Brief reports in conjunction with the Center for Crime and Justice Policy, exploring “Public Attitudes about Aerial Drone Activities: Results of a National Survey” and “Aerial Drones, Domestic Surveillance, and Public Opinion of Adults in the United States”.
Additional Areas of Faculty Expertise
Many other faculty and students at 51ԹϺ are involved with UAS activities in areas such as the following:
- Design
- Control Systems
- Communications Systems
- Sensor Development
- Automatic System Operations Monitoring
- UAS Computational Platforms
- Intelligent System Health Monitoring
- Law and Policy Related Research