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:

  • Transparent and trustworthy AI/robotics/CPS
  • Cognitive-aware human-autonomy integration and augmented humans
  • High-assurance and high-performance control of UAS and UAS swarms in challenging environments and missions
  • Guidance and control of UAS and UAS swarms for agricultural and defense applications

If you are interested in joining our lab, please read this first before contacting us.

Recent Lab News


  • 02/13/20 If you are a UCD student who is interested in solving real-world military problems, please consider the X-Force opportunity.
  • 02/07/20 Here is a video on one of our recent test runs to explore the idea of integrating UAV, computer vision, and AI for the identification of weeds. This work is a collaboration between our lab and Prof. Mohsen Mesgaran's lab (from Plant Sciences). The video was taken by Sean Franklin and Jonathan Dorsey.
  • 02/06/20 Our lab alumnus Roberto Hurtado will join Lockheed Martin as a system engineer and be responsible for the development of the helmet mounted display systems and cockpit display systems on the F-35, and other aircrafts. Congrats to Rob! We wish him a bright future!
  • 01/27/20 Dr. Kong has been promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure).
  • 01/24/20 Our lab has received a research grant from ONR on "Safety-Assured Apprenticeship Learning for Vision-Based Control of UAS in Riverine Environments". Looking forward to working on this exciting project! If you are a UC Davis student, a veteran or active-duty military student, and would like to learn more about UAVs and AI and be immersed in a research environment, please contact Dr. Kong.
  • 01/14/20 Our lab alumnus Grant Harman has started a job at the Johnson Space Center as part of NASA's Human Health and Performance Directorate (HH&P). Congrats to Grant! We wish him a bright future!
  • 01/01/20 Our lab alumnus Daniel Genova has started a job at CACI International. He works as a NASA contractor at the Johnson Space Center, specifically with the GNC Simulation team for the Lunar Gateway project. Congrats to Dan! We wish him a bright future!
  • 12/18/19 Our research on using drones for precision pest management was featured by CBS Sacramento as well as UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.
  • 12/13/19 Our review paper "Drones: Innovative Technology for Use in Precision Pest Management" is now available online.
  • 12/13/19 Gang Chen presented his work on "Semantic Inference for Cyber-Physical Systems with Signal Temporal Logic" at the Formal Methods in Control Session of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) held at Nice, France. Dr. Kong co-chaired the session.
  • 11/19/19 Our "Deep Reinforcement Learning" journal club led by Felipe Valdez just had the kickoff meeting today. Other members of the club include Andrew Michelmore, Aravind Sreejith, Jonathan Dorsey, Ryan Liang, Jason Dekarske, and Na Ma.
  • 11/15/19 Alexander Batista successfully defended his master thesis "Preliminary Results and Lessons Learned On: Deep Learning Based Human-Robot Interaction" today. Congrats to Alex! We wish him a bright future!
  • 11/06/19 Aravind Sreejith and Dr. Kong gave a talk on "Development of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for Episodic Air Pollutant Measurements" at Refinery And Chemical Industry Emissions Symposium.
  • 10/30/19 Here is a news article about space engineering at UC Davis.
  • 10/18/19 Daniel Genova successfully defended his master thesis "Optimized UAV Trajectory Tracking of an Unknown Dynamic Ground Target" today. Congrats to Dan! We wish him a bright future! Here are two videos about his work on combining online learning and nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) for tracking of highly-dynamic targets using UAS: side view and overhead view.
  • 10/10/19 Our paper "Optimized Dispensing by Multirotor UAVs in Wind: A Distribution Pattern Modelling Approach for Precision Pest Management" is now available at ScienceDirect.
  • 10/03/19 Today UC Davis hosts the NASA HOME institute kickoff meeting. We are very excited in joining the endeavor!
  • 07/23/19 Peng Wei has been selected as the winner of the 2019 N&M Sarigul-Klijn Space Engineering/Flight Research Award. Congrats to Peng!
  • 06/13/19 Nicolas Michel presented his work on "Multiphysical Modeling of Energy Dynamics for Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" at the International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) held at Atlanta, GA.
  • 06/06/19 Kaden Jeppesen, Kevin Mclaughlin, Bradley Pluschkell, Vishal Sharma, and Trevor Vidano presented their senior design project at the UC Davis Engineering Design Showcase. Please see a video about their project here.
  • 04/26/19 Gang Chen presented his work on "Co-design of Linear Time-Invariant Systems with Spectral Logic Specifications" at the CITRIS/CPAR Control Theory and Automation Symposium held at UC Berkeley.
  • 04/26/19 Erina Kitamura and Russell Evangelista presented their work on "Small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) for Remote Air Quality Monitoring" at the 30th Annual Undergraduate Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities Conference held at UC Davis.
  • 04/08/19 Our team, led by Dr. Steve Robinson, has received a $15 million grant from NASA to develop technologies critical to a sustainable human presence on the Moon and Mars. Our lab will contribute to the development of autonomous systems and human-automation teaming technologies. Looking forward to working with the team on this exciting project! Please see the NASA press release here.
  • 04/01/19 Daniel Andermatten successfully defended his master II report "Raspberry PI Sensor Package Collocation Model and Calibration Used with a Potential Temperature Inversion Layer Detection Algorithm" today. Congrats to Daneil! We wish him a bright future!
  • 03/27/19 Today we hosted a group of UAS researchers from three leading Danish Universities, Aalberg University, SDU, and DTU. Looking forward to potentially collaborating with them in the future!

In the Press

Location

Contact Us
academic surge, room 2328
one shields ave.
davis, CA 95616
zdkong (at) ucdavis (dot) edu