Our lab is interested in engineering and understanding collaborative autonomy and assured autonomy. We study many topics on the borders of control theory, artificial intelligence, formal methods, and cognitive science. Currently, our research focuses on:

  • Trustworthy AI/CPS, particularly safety and explainability
  • Adaptive human-autonomy teaming
  • Cognitive neuro-engineering
  • Autonomous UAS and UAS swarms
  • AI and aerial robotics for agricultural, environmental, public health, and defense applications

Our lab accepts students from MAE, CS, and BME. If you want to join our lab, please read this before contacting us.

Recent Lab News

  • 10/09/2025: Our paper, "Modeling Trust and its Dynamics from Physiological Signals and Embedded Measures for Operational Human-Autonomy Teaming," is now available online. 
  • 10/08/2025: Special Section on Safety, Robustness, and Effectiveness in Human–Machine Teaming with Dr. Kong as an editor has been published by IEEE Control Systems Letters.
  • 09/23/2025: Our paper, "An EEG-Network-Metric Based Approach to Real-Time Trust Inference in Human-Autonomy Teaming," is now available online. 
  • 09/19/2025 Our paper, "Implet: A Post-hoc Subsequence Explainer for Time Series Models", has been accepted to the Trust4ML Workshop co-located at the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) 2025.
  • 09/09/2025 Our paper, "Modeling Trust and Trust Dynamics from Physiological Signals and Embedded Measures for Operational Human-Autonomy Teaming", has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
  • 08/29/2025 The 8th IFAC Conference on Sensing, Control, and Automation Technologies for Agriculture (with Dr. Kong as the NOC Chair and Dr. Wei as a member of the NOC) has successfully concluded. 
  • 08/25/2025: Our paper, "Real-Time, Onboard, Model-based Wind Estimation and Control for Multirotor UAVs Flying in Winds," has been accepted for the 2026 AIAA SciTech Forum.
  • 08/15/2025: Dr. Kong attended the 2025 AFOSR Trust & Influences Program Review meeting held in Rome, NY (08/11-08/15). Here is an introductory video made by AFRL about our project (approved for public release).
  • 08/07/2025: Our paper, "Vision-based Navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Orchards: An Imitation Learning Approach," is now available online.
  • 07/24/2025: Prabhash and Victor served as instructors of the High School Summer AI Tech Camp: Remote, Sensing, Mapping, & AI for Sustainable Ag (organized by AIFS). Please find the course material here. 
  • 07/16/2025 Two of our papers, "Latent variables, temporal convolutional neural networks and decision making, creating insight into how we deliberate" and "Peak Delta Frequency Regulates the Timing of Decisions," have been selected for presentation at the 59th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers.
  • 07/01/2025 Our research on early wildfire detection is featured in the cover story of Aerospace America: “Wanted: More Eyes in the Skies”.
  • 06/28/2025 Dr. Cristina Davis and Dr. Zhaodan Kong attended a Colorado Regional Event organized by the UC Davis Development and Alumni Relations and presented their work on wildfire research.
  • 06/05/2025 Dr. Kong visited UC Riverside and gave a talk at the ME Colloquium on "Control Meets Machine Learning: Applications to Wildfire Detection and Neural Decision-Making".
  • 05/23/2025 Dr. Kong attended ICRA and gave an invited talk at the "Autonomy Under Duress – Robots in Wildland Fire" workshop. 
  • 05/21/2025: Our paper, "Optimization of Three-Dimensional Waypoint Ordering for Energy-Optimal Multirotor Operation," is now available online.
  • 05/16/2025: Our paper, "Neural dynamics encoding risky choices during deliberation reveal separate choice subspaces," is now available online.
  • 05/12/2025 Our paper "Exploring the Suitability of Piecewise-linear Dynamical Models for Cognitive Neural Dynamics" is now available online. 
  • 05/05/2025 A UC Davis team with Orfeas as the lead, Oliver and Rachel as team members, Dr. Kong and Dr. Wei as advisors, won three of four CITRIS Aviation Prizes (one shared with a UC Berkeley team).
  • 05/04/2025 The AIFS X Sony AgTech Challenge, led by Dr. Kong and featuring Peng, Prabhash, and Vitor as mentors, has successfully concluded! 
  • 04/26/2025 Dr. Kong and Prabhash attended the first Bay Area Drone Fest, where we presented our UAV-related projects. 
  • 04/25/2025 Pinn has been awarded a 2025-2026 NeuralStorm Fellowship in Neuroengineering. Congrats, Pinn!
  • 04/25/2025 Dr. Kong and Prabhash attended the 7th NorCal Control Workshop, where Prabhash gave a talk on early wildfire detection. 
  • 04/25/2025 Eric, Luuanne, and Rachel presented their projects at the 2025 Undergraduate Research Scholarship and Creative Activity Conference. 
  • 04/03/2025 Dr. Bashir El-Khoury, the Deputy Command Surgeon of the USSPACECOM, visited our lab.
  • 03/14/2025 Our team with Oliver as the lead and Dr.s Kong and Wei as the mentors is one of the finalists of the 2025 NASA Gateways to Blue Skies Competition.
  • 02/26/2025 Our lab will be part of a NASA Ignite project, "Integrated System and Predictive Model to Assess Air Quality and Rapidly Pinpoint Emerging Sources," led by Interlink Electronics.
  • 02/25/2025 Our lab will be part of a Global Affairs project "Exploring Complex Social-ecological Systems: Strategies for Climate Change Resilience and Sustainable Development in the African Wetland" led by Dr. Valeria La Saponara.
  • 02/19/2025 Dr. Kong gave a talk titled "UAS or Drones for Precision Agriculture" at the AIFS Speakers Series.
  • 02/03/2025 Dr. Kong visited UCSC and gave a talk titled "Uncrewed Aerial Systems for Disaster Response."
  • 01/23/2025 Dr. Kong served on a panel titled "Open Question: Artificial Intuition" held at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
  • 12/23/2024 Dr. Kong will serve as a guest editor for a special issue (of L-CSS) on Safety, Robustness, and Effectiveness in Human-Machine Teaming.
  • 12/09/2024 Our paper, "CohEx: A Generalized Framework for Cohort Explanation," has been accepted by AAAI-25.​​​

In the Press

Location

Contact Us
2900 spafford St,
​davis, CA 95618
zdkong (at) ucdavis (dot) edu