About ACL

The Aerospace Controls Laboratory (ACL) researches topics related to autonomous systems and control design for aircraft, spacecraft, and ground vehicles. Theoretical research is pursued in areas such as: decision making under uncertainty; path planning, activity and task assignment; estimation and navigation; sensor network design; robust control, adaptive control, and model predictive control. A key part of ACL is RAVEN (Real-time indoor Autonomous Vehicle test ENvironment), a unique experimental facility that uses a Vicon motion capture sensing to enable rapid prototyping of aerobatic flight controllers for helicopters and aircraft; robust coordination algorithms for multiple helicopters; and vision-based sensing algorithms for indoor flight.

Director

The director of the Laboratory is Dr. Jonathan P. How who is a Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1987 and his S.M. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1990 and 1993, respectively. He then studied for two years at MIT as a postdoctoral associate for the Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE) that flew on-board the Space Shuttle Endeavour in March 1995 (STS-67). Prior to joining MIT in 2000, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He has graduated a total of 25 Ph.D. students while at MIT and Stanford University on topics related to GPS navigation, multi-vehicle control, and robust/hybrid control.
Current research interests include the design and implementation of distributed real-time optimization algorithms to coordinate multiple autonomous vehicles in dynamic uncertain environments; and adaptive flight control to enable autonomous aerobatics. Professor How was the planning and control lead for the MIT DARPA Urban Challenge team that placed fourth in the recent race in Victorville, CA. He was the recipient of the 2002 Institute of Navigation Burka Award, is the Raymond L. Bisplinghoff Fellow for MIT Aero/Astro Department, is an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and a senior member of IEEE.