EE Professor M. Umit Uyar receives U.S. Army funding for drone research

M. Ümit Uyar, Professor of Electrical Engineering, has recently received a $1.2 million in funding from the U.S. ARMY to further his research aimed at designing autonomous drone flight and task control by artificial intelligence and game theory based algorithms that would not require preplanned mission directives and allow for real-time response to unpredictable changes in theatre.

A team led by computer engineering professor Umit Uyar of The City College of the City University of New York is working to design such drones, referred to as autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, which work as a swarm to collectively accomplish complex tasks that cannot be done by any individual one.

With a previous grant from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, organized by the MSI STEM Research Development Consortium, Uyar and colleagues have taken the first steps towards programming artificial intelligence into UAVs that allows the UAVs to react quickly, usually within milliseconds. Uyar and Janusz Kusyk, a professor and artificial intelligence and game theory specialist at the New York City College of Technology, are working together to use game theory to program the UAVs. Game theory, popularized by the 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind” about the economist John Nash, calls for each interacting party to act in its own best interests by taking into account what others will do.