The DC-NOVA Chapter of AESS-IEEE is excited to announce Dr David Casbeer will be giving a talk on November 1st at the IEEE in DC.  Dr Casbeer is going on talk about how UAVs, commonly called drones, are everywhere, and the autopilots that guide them are becoming more reliable and capable. However, there is a large hurdle that must be overcome before UAVs are truly “autonomous.” We will look at how autopilots and the tools available in control science and other disciplines act as a foundation for UAV autonomy and teaming. Examples and applications highlighting these ideas will come from an Air Force perspective.

Dr. David Casbeer is the technical area lead for the UAV Cooperative and Intelligent Control Team within the Control Science Center of Excellence in the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Aerospace Systems Directorate. The UAV team focuses on decision making, planning, and coordination for multiple autonomous UAVs acting and reacting in uncertain and adversarial environments. Dr. Casbeer received the BS and PhD degrees from Brigham Young University in 2003 and 2009, respectively, where he advanced theory describing the statistics of decentralized estimation techniques. In 2016, Dr. Casbeer was awarded AFRL’s Early Career Award for distinguished foundational research in multi-agent control. He currently serves as the chair for the AIAA Intelligent Systems Technical Committee and as a Senior Editor for the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems.