February 14th, 2023
“Over the past 18 months, an electrical engineering researcher and his team at Missouri S&T have been awarded over $2.4 million in grants from the United States Department of Defense (DOD) that will directly impact the country’s national security.
‘We are honored to regularly work with the DOD to help advance and improve technology that they may use in operational environments,’ says Dr. Jagannathan Sarangapani, the William A. Rutledge-Emerson Electric Co. Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering at Missouri S&T. ‘Our recent projects have been related to unmanned ground and aerial vehicles and how to make them as ‘smart’ and effective as possible through trustworthy and lifelong machine learning, control and intelligence.’
The most recent Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) grant Sarangapani received was for over $465,000 from the Office of Naval Research. This DURIP grant’s purpose is to allow Sarangapani and his team of researchers to create a testbed for unmanned and autonomous vehicles operating in a “swarm,” in which several vehicles could be used at once, which could increase their protection and redundancy.
This award supports Sarangapani’s basic research efforts with DOD agencies on machine learning and artificial intelligence for autonomous vehicles.
Part of the research team’s work will be hands-on and use a variety of vehicles, and other aspects will be computational. Their work has the potential to cover everything from drones and helicopters to unmanned on-ground and under-ground vehicles.”