UW Aeronautics & Astronautics is a leader in controls, which deals with the position, direction, safety and communication aspects of a single vehicle or swarm of vehicles in motion through air, water or space.
We offer courses in the guidance, navigation, and control of unmanned aerial systems as well as the optimization and control of networked systems. We are leaders in research in control of autonomous systems, bio-inspired engineering, model predictive control, dynamical modeling, and estimation for single and distributed systems. We develop tools that address the temporal, spatial and nonlinear challenges posed by autonomy.
A&A undergrad and graduate students have the opportunity to explore practical applications for autonomy by gaining hands-on flight-testing and field operations experience with interdisciplinary collaborators and partners.
Key research areas
- Automatic control
- Autonomous vehicle control
- Control theory
- Dynamics and optimization
- Flight operations
- Underwater vehicle design
- Unmanned aerial systems
Associated faculty
Research highlights
The Nonlinear Dynamics and Control Lab works with both traditional autonomous vehicles as well as bio-inspired propulsion, agile flight, and neural engineering.
The Autonomous Flight Systems Lab develops unmanned systems technology for critical uses such as wildfire modeling and search and locate.
The RAIN Lab is advancing research on how the structure of networks affects the dynamics of systems that evolve over them.
The Autonomous Control Lab is interpreting the insights from Mars missions to advance autonomous applications for Earth and Space.
Award-winning student team
