Navigation, Guidance, Control, and Dynamics Commons^™

Algorithms & Design Behind Autonomous Uavs And Ugvs Coordinated System, Aashish Dhakal

Honors Theses

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), when coordinated effectively, offer substantial potential for automating large-scale tasks—from search and rescue operations to precision agriculture. However, synchronizing these autonomous systems remains challenging, especially in time-sensitive missions requiring precision. This thesis investigates the design and algorithmic coordination of autonomous UAVs and UGVs, examining both single-vehicle scenarios and multi-agent (swarming) approaches. Using the Robot Operating System (ROS) as a communication backbone, I integrate GPS positioning with computer vision techniques through OpenCV, enabling accurate localization and object detection. During the development phase, I validate my methods using ArduPilot Software-in-the-Loop (SITL) simulations within …

Vector Estimation For Continuous Tracking Of Observed Radio Signals (V.E.C.T.O.R.) Lunar Navigation System, Dimitry Melnikov, Evan Bartel, Andrew Burrier, Goran Gjorgievski

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

NASA's Artemis program requires precise navigation capabilities to establish the first sustained presence on the lunar surface. However, as launches bring necessary orbital infrastructure, the Artemis program will face a critical period during which reliable lunar navigation is not possible. To address this challenge, the V.E.C.T.O.R. system tracks assets, such as rovers and astronauts, as User Terminals relative to a pre-existing cell tower, or Base Station. To do so, the system leverages existing Base Station hardware to calculate the location of User Terminals in conjunction with existing communications infrastructure.

V2i-Based Adaptive Collision Avoidance For Safety And Traffic Efficiency, Vaishnavi Balambeed

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

To leverage the growing communication and connectivity among modern vehicles, Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) systems are increasingly being used to implement active safety applications. However, current research often overlooks the impact of algorithms such as collision avoidance on traffic flow efficiency. This work investigates the adaptation of a collision avoidance algorithm implemented in V2I to incorporate a variable time headway and spacing control strategy. The proposed approach aims to maintain higher average speeds among vehicles, lower individual vehicle’s waiting, and travel times in the vicinity of the infrastructural unit while simultaneously avoiding collisions; thereby enhancing both safety and traffic …

Development Of A Solidworks Api, Andrew Magyar

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With the current advancements in CAD software, and precision of modern motors, we believe that a new way to communicate from hardware to software is possible. This report details the steps we have taken to attempt just that. The essential idea behind this is that modern controls for robotics are not as user friendly as they can be. The general action taken is to create an API for SolidWorks that connects it to the other necessary controller software and makes it so that a robot, and its exact current position, can be changed simply and intuitively from SolidWorks. Furthermore, the …

Vanet Applications Under Loss Scenarios & Evolving Wireless Technology, Adil Alsuhaim

All Dissertations

In this work we study the impact of wireless network impairment on the performance of VANET applications such as Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC), and other VANET applications that periodically broadcast messages. We also study the future of VANET application in light of the evolution of radio access technologies (RAT) that are used to exchange messages. Previous work in the literature proposed fallback strategies that utilizes on-board sensors to recover in case of wireless network impairment, those methods assume a fixed time headway value, and do not achieve string stability. In this work, we study the string stability of a …

Developing A Web-Based System For Remote Collection And Analysis Of Vehicle Electrical Systems Over Canbus Using Carloop, Joshua N. Valle, Alex Columna-Fuentes

Capstone Showcase

Our program collects vehicle data using an OBD-II device called Carloop that is plugged into the vehicle's diagnostic port. The device executes our code which then communicates with the vehicle's onboard computer to collect data such as engine RPM, vehicle speed, fuel level, and other diagnostic information. This data is then sent over WiFi to Particle’s Cloud, which is a platform for managing IoT devices.

Integrations set up on Particle take care of sending data to our InfluxDB Database, which is hosted on our own cloud-based machine. InfluxDB is a high-performance time-series database that is optimized for storing and querying …

Reduced Fuel Emissions Through Connected Vehicles And Truck Platooning, Paul D. Brummitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication enable the sharing, in real time, of vehicular locations and speeds with other vehicles, traffic signals, and traffic control centers. This shared information can help traffic to better traverse intersections, road segments, and congested neighborhoods, thereby reducing travel times, increasing driver safety, generating data for traffic planning, and reducing vehicular pollution. This study, which focuses on vehicular pollution, used an analysis of data from NREL, BTS, and the EPA to determine that the widespread use of V2V-based truck platooning—the convoying of trucks in close proximity to one another so as to reduce air drag …

Evaluating Driving Performance Of A Novel Behavior Planning Model On Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Keyur Shah

Honors Scholar Theses

Many current algorithms and approaches in autonomous driving attempt to solve the "trajectory generation" or "trajectory following” problems: given a target behavior (e.g. stay in the current lane at the speed limit or change lane), what trajectory should the vehicle follow, and what inputs should the driving agent apply to the throttle and brake to achieve this trajectory? In this work, we instead focus on the “behavior planning” problem—specifically, should an autonomous vehicle change lane or keep lane given the current state of the system?

In addition, current theory mainly focuses on single-vehicle systems, where vehicles do not communicate with …

Techniques To Solve Decision-Making Problems, Dilnoz Tulkunovna Muhamediyeva, Bekmuratov Fayzievich Tulkun

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

Solving decision-making problems in poorly formalized systems only with the help of deterministic and probabilistic methods is insufficient. To do this, it is necessary to widely apply the methods of hybrid intelligent systems and, especially, the methods of “soft” calculations (SoftCalculation, SoftComputing) and the directions of ComputationalIntelligence — intelligent computing technologies that are emerging on this theoretical and methodological base. An immune - fuzzy algorithm for the synthesis of fuzzy inference systems (FIS) is proposed. A two-stage adaptive FIS synthesis algorithm is described. At the first stage, the initial fuzzy parameters are clustered in order to reduce the number of …

Zips Racing Electric Can Communications, Andrew Jordan, Adam Long, Susanah Kowalewski, Rami Nehme

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The CAN protocol has been a standard of electronic communication networks of automotive vehicles since the early 2000s due to its robust reliability in harsh environments. For the 2020 competition year, the Zips Racing Electric design team will be building an entirely new, fully-electric vehicle with CAN communication implemented rather than communicating via pure analog signals. Hardware and software can be utilized to read analog electrical signals from a source, such as accelerator and brake sensors, and encode them into a digital message that meets the CAN 2.0B communication protocol standard. Likewise, software can be used to extract data from …

Roadnet: Robust Adaptive Network For Information Diffusion In Vanet, Priyashraba Misra

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The automotive industry has changed more in the last one decade than ever before. Rapid advancements in autonomous driving have opened up opportunities for CAVs (Connected and Automated Vehicles). Vehicles today rely on a sensor-suite to map the surrounding and use that information for safety and navigation. The sensor's view is limited to its line of sight and this drawback can be tapered off by using Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I), generally referred to as Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communication. In this thesis, we specifically focus on utilizing V2V communication using on-board Dedicated Short Range Communication …

Assessing The Competing Characteristics Of Privacy And Safety Within Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks, Jacob W. Connors

Theses and Dissertations

The introduction of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication has the promise of decreasing vehicle collisions, congestion, and emissions. However, this technology places safety and privacy at odds; an increase of safety applications will likely result in the decrease of consumer privacy. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed the Security Credential Management System (SCMS) as the back end infrastructure for maintaining, distributing, and revoking vehicle certificates attached to every Basic Safety Message (BSM). This Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) scheme is designed around the philosophy of maintaining user privacy through the separation of functions to prevent any one subcomponent from identifying …

Vehicle-To-Barrier Communication During Real-World Vehicle Crash Tests, Samil Temel, Mehmet C. Vuran, Mohammad M.R. Lunar, Zhongyuan Zhao, Abdul Salam, Ronald K. Faller, Cody S. Stolle

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Vehicle-to-barrier (V2B) communication is expected to facilitate wireless interactions between vehicles and roadside barriers in next-generation intelligent transportation systems. V2B systems will help mitigate single-vehicle, run-off-road crashes, which account for more than 50% of roadside crash fatalities. In this work, the characteristics of the wireless channel prior to and during a crash are analyzed using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) techniques, which has been used in existing vehicular communication systems. More specifically, the performance of OFDM-based V2B links are measured in real-world crash tests for the first time. Three crash tests conducted at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, Lincoln, Nebraska, …