Through innovative control strategies and more sophisticated hardware, research teams at MIT are constantly improving the range of manuevers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Small scale UAVs are however, still constrained by the fact that their environment must have enough free space for them to avoid making contact with any surface. We are therefore attempting to drastically improve their abilities by designing a control capable of including intermittent contacts in both its planning and feedback stages. The control this projet will yield could for example, allow a small drone to rapidly change its direction by bouncing off a wall.

I have a deep interest in networks and signal analysis, both of which will be required to do well in this research. Beyond this, I’ve had many years of experience in building visualizations and user centered products.