Richard Han, Projects in Autonomous Drone Systems: Drone Swarm Lift, Mid-Air Battery Swap for Drones, and Autonomous Drone Landing

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Speaker

Richard Han (Macquarie University)

Abstract

In this talk, Professor Han will introduce the Macquarie University Drone Lab, mqdronelab.com, and discuss three research projects under way in advanced autonomous drone systems. The first two projects involve collaborative teams or swarms of drones. Namely, he will describe their work on mid-air battery swap for drones, which seeks to address the energy challenge that severely limits flight time in today's commercial multi-rotor drones. He will also describe their project on drone swarm lift and transport, in which groups of drones cooperate to autonomously lift and transport payloads, overcoming the lift limitations of a single drone. Finally, he will explore their work on autonomous drone landing, which seeks to solve the last meter problem of landing drones safely using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Bio

Dr. Richard Han is a Professor in the School of Computing at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.  His research interests include mobile computing, drone systems, and wireless sensor networks. He graduated with his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Bachelors of Science with Distinction in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.  He worked as a Research Staff Member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center before becoming an Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the Department of Computer Science.  He joined Macquarie in 2021, and has co-founded the Macquarie Drone Lab.  His research has received ~15K citations with a 50+ h-index.