Xioajun Geng, California State University-Northridge
Intellectual Merit: Autonomous vehicles, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unmanned Ground Vehicles, play important roles in civilian and military applications. In recent years, more research has been directed to high levels of planning and management, cooperative control and information fusion among multiple autonomous vehicles, and vision-aided intelligence. The goal of this project is to develop an unmanned vehicle test-bed wherein various unmanned vehicles will be developed and tested so that research work on autonomous technology can be conducted. Not only will the test-bed proposed in this project serve as a unique platform for various advanced research topics, but also the development process itself provides unique opportunities for our faculty and students to work interactively. Overall, the on-going research activities of the faculty and the students will benefit from the development phase of the system immediately and from the test-bed system after being developed.
Broader Impact: CSUN is a Primarily Undergraduate Institution and has a strong commitment to research that involves and provides training to both undergraduate and graduate students. The campus is a federally designated Minority Serving Institution and Hispanic Serving Institution, and is regularly ranked in the top 20 institutions for the number of Bachelor degrees awarded to minority students. National Science Foundation has ranked the College of Engineering and Computer Science as one of the top five master's institutions in the nation for producing undergraduates who go on to obtain doctoral degrees in science and engineering. Furthermore, nearly 72% of the College's undergraduate enrollment and 64% of its graduate students are ethnic minorities. Therefore, the proposed project will directly impact underrepresented students in the engineering and technologies.
