The market for unmanned and autonomous vehicles continues to grow. The existing and potential applications pose exciting opportunities for industry. 

Today, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are used for search and rescue, surveillance, mapping, crop spraying, environmental monitoring. Furthermore unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) have very diverse applications such as security and mine clearance.

Cranfield has a leading reputation in autonomous systems, established with over 15 years of research in this field. Our expertise covers all types of autonomous vehicles including airborne, ground and marine. Current areas of research include:

  • Sense and Avoid – to enable autonomous vehicles (both ground and air) to operate in non-segregated environments by being able to determine any course or altitude change to avoid intruders or to autonomously manoeuvre the UAS/UGV to eliminate the conflict.

  • Insertion into Airspace – current airspace is highly regulated and UAS must comply with regulations to operate safely and share the same airspace with other air traffic.

  • Navigation and Path Planning – development of guidance and navigation algorithms which enable autonomous vehicles to operate efficiently and safely in complex environments. This includes development of trajectory management algorithms for different elements of flight i.e. coordinated with other vehicles, optimised search or optimised routing.

  • Energy Management – exploring novel power generation concepts, including innovative electrical machine topologies, generation systems with multiple components and alternative means of power generation, such as fuel cells, solar or thermo-electric power. We also undertake research towards efficient power management and providing energy autonomy, allowing the electrical system to continue to meet the demands placed upon it regardless of the state of the power system and the environment.

  • Autonomous Maintenance and Health Management – development of technologies that will improve the reliability and availability of complex systems and minimising downtime. We aim to improve the through life cost required for the operation of autonomous vehicles and develop prognostic/diagnostic algorithms for integrated systems health management.

  • Network Decision Systems – development of algorithms and architectures that enable communication and coordination between multiple agents in the presence of incomplete and imperfect information.

  • Cyber Physical Systems – cyber/physical couplings result in highly-dynamic evolution of cyber and physical properties. The analysis and design of cyber-physical systems requires understanding of the joint dynamics of computers, software, networks and physical processes.

We work with a number of organisations across various sectors including defence, military, aerospace, transport, research councils and UK/European Government. We often collaborate with other Universities on projects, for example Loughborough and Imperial College.

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