Professor Arthur G Richards

I specialize in the application of trajectory optimization to problems in aerospace. Examples of recent work include:

• autonomous exploration of a cluttered environment by an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV)
• fuel-efficient rendezvous of spacecraft for Mars Sample Return mission
• robust air traffic flow management

This technologies involved include:

• non-convex optimization for avoidance constraints, such as obstacle avoidance or air traffic separation
• robust model predictive control, applying optimization in real time to compensate for disturbances and other uncertainty
• distributed optimization and control, enabling cooperation across large teams of vehicles

In all of the work, the challenges are to find solutions that are:

• high performance, e.g. handling high levels of air traffic or using minimal fuel
• robust, able to work in uncertain environments or even without a map at all
• scalable, able to extend to very large numbers of vehicles
• fast, using efficient algorithms to respond quickly to new information