UAVs – Challenges and

Opportunities

Kelly Cohen, Manish Kumar

UAV MASTER LAB

&

Dave Feil-Seifer

University of Nevada

UAV Workshop, August 10, 2016

UAVs for Emergencies Mapping Desired Attributes to Technologies

Accurate Situational

Awareness

Resource Gathering

and Allocation

Information

Visualization &

Dissemination

Doctrine Development

& Training

• Effective UAV Platform (VTOL,

Endurance, Payload, Range,

Bandwidth, Reliability)

• Integration of Sensor Suite (IR,

CCD, Acoustic, Hyper-spectral)

• Information fusion and distribution

(incl. GIS, weather, infrastructure,

predictive capability)

• AR/VR for UAV Operation doctrine

development & training

• Collaborative multi-agent, large-

scale optimization of emergency

operations (including medical,

traffic, police, social)

• Human-machine interface

UAV MASTER Lab Co-Directors: Profs. Kelly Cohen & Manish Kumar

• Over 2000 sq. ft. (Indoor Flight Test facility)

• 10 Phd, 9 MS graduate students, 6 Undergraduate students

• In collaboration with the Ohio Indiana UASC (Unmanned Aerial Systems :

• 11 FAA approved COA’s for outdoor flight tests at Wilmington Airpark (6 Sq. Km @ max.

altitude 1000 ft.) & West Virginia Forestry - 5 VTOL configurations: single rotor, 2 x

quad, hexacopter, Octacopter.

FAA Approved Flight Tests

at Wilmington Airpark

Wildfire monitoring Package Delivery

Fault Tolerant UAV

Design

Genetic Fuzzy AI beats

tactical experts in combat

simulation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V3gX-vDUUM

NSF - National Science

Foundation ~ $1.2 M

• UAVs for Emergency

operations

• Human-Machine

interface for UAV

• Additive manufacturing

of UAV airframe

Industry ~ $250K

• Package delivery

HorseFly UAV

• Autopilot design

• Fault tolerant Flight

control

• Morphing Rotorcraft

US Air Force ~ $1.0 M

• Collaborative UAVs

operations

• Cascading genetic

fuzzy systems

• Intelligent Engine

Maintenance

US/ARMY ~$200K

• System Identification

& Control of multi-

rotor UAV

• Multi-Agent systems

State of Ohio (UASC) ~1,230K

• Sponsorship of FAA

approval for UAV flight

tests

• Access to use Wilmington

Airpark for outdoor flight

• Helium Aerostat platform

NASA Ames ~$50K

• Space Act

Agreement on UTM

– Unmanned Traffic

Management

• Support of UC

students

UAV

MASTER

Lab

NASA Langley ~ $20K

• Situational

awareness

• Sense and avoid

• UAV integration

into NAS

NASA OSGC ~ $200K

• UAVs for Fire-fighting

• Undergraduate

Student support

• Intelligent Systems

• Outreach for K-12

schools