Autonomous Systems and Control Lab (ASCL)
Welcome to ASCL at UA!
We are a research group in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Alabama that specializes in control and autonomous/intelligent systems. We leverage dynamical systems, control theory, and machine learning tools to design and validate control and decision-making algorithms for autonomous/intelligent systems to ensure their safe and efficient operation in challenging scenarios under various uncertainties. Besides theoretical development, we are very interested in implementing and testing our algorithms on aerial/ground vehicles in the real world.
Some specific research directly we currently focus on include
Robust and adaptive control
Planning and predictive control under uncertainties
Data-driven modeling and control
Safe learning-based control and decision making
Deep learning for reliable control
Resilient autonomous systems
Applications in transportation, robotics, and sustainable agricultural management
News
04/27/2024: Dr. Zhao gave a talk on safety-critical control under uncertainties at the 2024 Midwest Workshop on Control and Game Theory
02/09/2024: Dr. Zhao served on an NSF panel.
01/26/2024: Dr. Zhao gave a seminar talk on safety-critical control under uncertainties for the University of New Mexico ME department.
01/2024: Two papers on robust adaptive MPC and predictive CBF were accepted to 2024 American Control Conference.
12/2023: Our proposal on rapid adaptation for resilient autonomous systems was funded by the UA ORED Small Grant Program.
12/2023: Our paper on adaptive reference governor has been published on IEEE TAC.
08/2023: Two funded Ph.D. positions are immediately available! See Openings for details.