Urban Air Traffic Management

What is USRC (University Student Research Challenge)?

USRC seeks to challenge students to solve problems related to aeronautics concepts and research. It is organized by NASA and goes through a rigorous process of selection of many projects from all accredited U.S. institutions. The challenge also encourages entrepreneurial minds and invites collaboration between the engineering and business world. That introduces us to crowdfunding - a bridge between us and the non-traditional communities who are interested in aeronautics research missions.

How are drones used in urban cities? What inspired us to do this project? Why is it important?

Drones will be populating our sky shortly for various purposes including delivery, security, and transportation. However, imagine drones flying all over us, crashing, falling, and at the minimum, shadowing us from the sky. To prevent such undesired circumstances, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provides a guideline for Urban Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Yet, there are few technical measures that well encode the qualitative guidelines. Our team is building an end-to-end pipeline that makes drones generate and follow a safe and efficient trajectory while minimizing the risk/exposure to the ground population. We hope our work can help to keep our sky clean and safe while allowing us to exploit all the benefits of UAVs.

Our goal

A. Optimal Planning, Safety Guarantee, Robust Execution

The first goal is to rigorously formulate an optimal path planner for drones based on the cost map that encodes FAA regulations and verify the feasibility of the algorithm in a virtual environment. An algorithm that generates optimal safe flight routes through complex urban environments using a synthesis of prior research will be established.

To be specific, we will design a congestion-aware path planning scheme that minimizes the chances of drones getting overpopulated in one area. Such circumstances can amplify uncertainty and therefore trigger unsafety on the ground. We also intend to encode human population on the ground when planning for the congestion-aware path, so that drones fly sparsely and minimally fly over people. Such path planner will be complemented with a robust path following module that helps drones to follow such path even under dynamic disturbance that can happen while executing the mission.

Following the synthesis, simulations will be conducted as proof of concept before advancing to hardware implementation.

B. Implementation & Physical Testing

The second goal is to implement our algorithm on real UAVs in a downscale urban environment to validate the real-world applicability. Implementation will take place in the Advanced Controls Research Lab Vicon facility at UIUC (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign). It will include a down-scale model of an urban environment. Moreover, it will also include various roaming drones, which act as dynamic obstacles to test the feasibility of online path planning. The main goal of hardware implementation is to demonstrate the versatility of developed protocols and algorithms in realistic settings. The test will be conducted with several types of drones and objects to prove rigor and adaptability.

Who we are:

We are a group of 6 driven, hardworking business and engineering students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We believe in technology changing the world and the need for constant technological advancements. We strive to find solutions for aviation outcomes. We are super excited for you to join us in this journey of shaping the future of urban air mobility!

How you will help us:

Every penny we receive from this donation will go straight into the physical experiment of algorithms that will compute a set of more optimal paths. With every donation of $200+, an affiliated questionnaire will be sent out for customization and shipping info. The team will send out a handwritten postcard to show our thanks for your affirmation and interest in our project!