Event

Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar: Kingsley Fregene,'Autonomy & Bio-Inspired MAVs'

Friday, April 29, 2016
2:00 p.m.
2216 JM Patterson
Ania Picard
301 405 4358
appicard@umd.edu

Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar

Another RoboSeed – Autonomy & Some Applications of Bio-Inspired Wholly Rotating Micro Air Vehicles

Kingsley Fregene
Group Leader, Robotics & Intelligent Systems,
Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, Cherry Hill, NJ

Host
Derek Paley

Abstract
Engineers and researchers have long tried to harness the benefits of the flight designs evolved by nature over millennia by developing biologically-inspired air vehicles that attempt to mimic nature’s flyers. These include flapping wing designs motivated by insect or bird flight and single- or double-winged flyers inspired by fruits and seeds. Winged seeds, called Samaras, are perhaps the most-simple, stable and efficient of the flyers that abound in nature. In this talk, we will describe research at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Labs that developed autonomous control for a family of Samara-inspired MAVs. We will discuss innovations in vehicle modeling, state sensing/estimation and control that enabled successful demonstration of several autonomous sensing applications using these vehicles.  In particular, we will describe a configuration in which the MAVs are equipped with RF payloads for tracking and navigation-aiding applications in degraded GPS environments.  

Biography
Kingsley Fregene is the group leader for Robotics & Intelligent Systems at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Labs. He leads a team that conducts research and develops advanced Robotics, Autonomy and Unmanned Systems technologies, often in collaboration with world-class academic researchers, national labs and other similar organizations. Dr. Fregene has played a leadership role in several US DoD advanced technology programs that cut across robotics, autonomy and unmanned systems. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, he held positions with Honeywell Labs, where he had important roles on several DARPA programs, notably the Micro Air Vehicle program, which became the RQ-16 T-Hawk. He also held positions at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Labs, where his work included the development of cooperative multi-robot localization and mapping technologies. He serves the wider technical and scientific community on NSF review panels and on the editorial board of the IEEE Robotics & Automation and Control Systems Societies. He is also the chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Aerospace Controls. He holds 5 patents, with several more pending. He received his doctoral degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University Of Waterloo, Canada.