University research team awarded $8 million NASA grant to develop air taxis

An inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team led by North Car­oli­na Agri­cul­tur­al and Tech­ni­cal State Uni­ver­si­ty (NC A&T) has received a four-year, $8 mil­lion award from NASA to devel­op, test and even­tu­al­ly deploy air taxis.

The insti­tu­tion is the first his­tor­i­cal­ly black col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty (HBCU) to lead a project for the space agency’s Uni­ver­si­ty Lead­er­ship Ini­tia­tive (ULI), after NASA request­ed pro­pos­als which addressed at least one of the agency’s six strate­gic thrusts.

Abdol­lah Homai­far, prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor and a NASA Lan­g­ley Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor in the Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing (COE), said: “I am excit­ed for this col­lab­o­ra­tion as we are address­ing real chal­lenges in our soci­ety that require solu­tions that one group can­not pro­vide alone. We won’t have the lux­u­ry of phys­i­cal space to build more roads as the pop­u­la­tions in urban areas con­tin­ue to grow.”

Homai­far also serves as the direc­tor of the Autonomous Con­trol Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ACIT) Insti­tute and direc­tor of the TECHLAV DoD Cen­ter of Excel­lence in Auton­o­my.

The ini­tia­tive focus­es on devel­op­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of researchers and engi­neers and empha­sis­es the inclu­sion of HBCUs and minor­i­ty-serv­ing insti­tu­tions.

NCA&T will col­lab­o­rate with researchers at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty in Indi­ana and the Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, as well as indus­try lead­ers from Alaka’i Tech­nolo­gies, Auro­ra Flight Sci­ences, Gen­er­al Atom­ics Aero­nau­ti­cal Sys­tems and Northrop Grum­man. 

They will address the fol­low­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenges in advanced air mobil­i­ty: 

• Safe Per­cep­tion, Coor­di­na­tion, Plan­ning, and Nav­i­ga­tion — led by Ali Kari­mod­di­ni (NC A&T), and Kyr­i­akos Vamvoudakis (Geor­gia Tech) to devel­op flex­i­ble and adap­tive coor­di­na­tion and con­trol algo­rithms for urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM).
• Secured Auton­o­my — Led by Inseok Hwang and Dengfeng Sun (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty) to devel­op secure algo­rithms for future UAM. Cyber-phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics will address both con­ven­tion­al data secu­ri­ty and phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty.
• Ver­i­fi­ca­tion and Val­i­da­tion and Test­ing and Eval­u­a­tion — led by Homai­far (NC A&T), and Sam Coogan (Geor­gia Tech), to devel­op ver­i­fi­ca­tion and val­i­da­tion pro­ce­dures to pro­vide prov­able guar­an­tees of cor­rect­ness of the UAM soft­ware and sup­port cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the devel­oped tech­nolo­gies through test­ing and eval­u­a­tion. 
• Sys­tem Inte­gra­tion — led by Dan DeLau­ren­tis (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty), and Mark Costel­lo (Geor­gia Tech), will inte­grate TC 1–3 prod­ucts through depen­den­cy ana­lyt­ics, inte­grat­ed sim­u­la­tion, and exper­i­men­tal flight tests through fast-learn­ing cycles.

NC A&T will offer hands-on research for both under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents and sup­port out­reach oppor­tu­ni­ties that intro­duce K‑12 stu­dents to engi­neer­ing.

John Kel­ly (NC A&T) and James Gop­pert (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty) will lead the edu­ca­tion and out­reach com­po­nents of the project aimed to train the future STEM work­force. Oth­er N.C. A&T researchers on the project include Yahya Kamalipour, Ph.D., M. Nabil Mah­moud, Ph.D., Ioan­nis A. Rap­tis, Ph.D., and Alli­son Sul­li­van, Ph.D.

Addi­tion­al researchers include Shaoshuai Mou, Ph.D., at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty, Judy Hoff­man at Geor­gia Tech, James Pad­u­ano, Ph.D., at Auro­ra Flight Sci­ences, Bruce J. Holmes, Ph.D., at Alaka’i Tech­nolo­gies, Damon Jenk­ins at Gen­er­al Atom­ics Aero­nau­ti­cal Sys­tems and Neta Ezer at Northrop Grum­man Corp.