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

  • 10/11/2024 CITRIS publishes an article featuring our CITRIS-supported research.
  • 10/11/2024 Dr. Kong, Dr. Wei, and Prabhash attended and gave a talk at the "Bay Area Robotics Symposium" held at UC Berkeley. 
  • 09/27/2024 Dr. Kong, Prabhash, and Oliver attended "Leading the Change Series Workshop A Community Discussion on Making the Most of Drone and Sensor Data" held in UCSC Silicon Valley Campus. 
  • 09/26/2024 Dr. Kong presented his work on real-time brain state assessment at "Psychology and Physiology in Deep Space Habitation/Extreme Environments" co-organized by UCD and U of Adelaide. 
  • 09/17/2024 Dr. Kong and Dr. Michele Barbato shared their research on wildfire management at an Engineering on Tap event.
  • 09/05/2024 Our paper "Optical Flow as Spatial-Temporal Attention Learners" is accepted by the Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
  • 08/28/2024 Dr. Kong joins the CITRIS Aviation Initiative Leadership team.
  • 08/22/2024 Our lab will be part of the Center for Pandemic Insights (a new multi-institution partnership supported by NSF and with Dr. Christine Johnson as the PI).
  • 07/12/2024 Our paper "Energy-Optimal Planning of Waypoint-Based UAV Missions - Does Minimum Distance Mean Minimum Energy?" is accepted by IROS 2024.
  • 06/24/2024 Three high students, Adam Clemens, Anirudh Kashyap, and John Vickers, and one ECE undergraduate, Luuanne Chau, will work in our lab during the summer of 2024. Adam and John (supported by the Young Scholars Program) will work on designing a terrestrial-aerial robot for exploration missions; Ani and Luuanne (supported by the CITRIS Workforce Innovation Program) will work on wildfire detection with thermal imaging. 
  • 05/30/2024 Dr. Kong gave a talk on "Towards Engineering Solutions to End Destructive Wildfire" at the National Academy of Engineering NorCal Regional Meeting.
  • 05/03/2024 Our lab and our Center for Spaceflight Research are featured in an article published by COE.
  • 04/29/2024 Dr. Kong gave a talk on "Guidance and Control of UAS in Challenging Environments" at the NASA-UC Technical Summit: Enabling Sustainable Urban Air Mobility with e-VTOL, held at NASA Ames.
  • 04/12/2024 Our paper "A Control-Theoretic Spatio-Temporal Model for Wildfire Smoke Propagation Using UAV-Based Air Pollutant Measurements" is available online.
  • 04/12/2024 Congrats Prabhash on wining the second prize in the Grad Slam competition organized by UC Graduate Studies!
  • 04/12/2024 Our paper "SUNY: A Visual Interpretation Framework for Convolutional Neural Networks from a Necessary and Sufficient Perspective"  is accepted for publication at the Explainable AI for Computer Vision (XAI4CV) Workshop (CVPR 2024).
  • 04/12/2024 Our paper "A Compact Handheld Sensor Package with Sensor Fusion for Comprehensive and Robust 3D Mapping" is available online.
  • 04/09/2024 Our work on using UAVs and IoT sensors for wildfire detection and prevention is featured by TechBriefs.
  • 04/02/2024 Our paper "Validating Rapid Trust Measurements in Spaceflight-Relevant Human-Autonomy Teaming Applications" is selected for oral presentation by the Symposium on Human Exploration of the Solar System of the 75th International Astronautical Congress (IAA).
  • 03/12/2024 Our paper "Operationally Realistic Human-Autonomy Teaming Task Simulation to Study Multi-Dimensional Trust" is available online.
  • 02/09/2024 Dr. Kong presented his work on human-autonomy teaming at Team Research Form: Space Exploration.
  • 02/02/2024 Dr. Kong attended the first Bay Area Aero-Fest (BAAF) held in Berkely.
  • 02/01/2024 Our paper "Control/Physical Systems Co-design with Spectral Temporal Logic Specifications and Its Applications to MEMS" is available online.
  • 01/10/2024 Our paper "Operationally Realistic Human-Autonomy Teaming Task Simulation to Study Multi-Dimensional Trust" is accepted by 2024 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).
  • 01/10/2024 Our paper "Space-relevant Human-autonomy Teaming Task to Study the Multi-dimensional and Dynamic Nature of Trust" is accepted by 2024 Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) Annual Scientific Meeting.
  • 12/18/2023 Dr. Kong joins the Fire Research Group led by Dr. Tarek Zohdi.
  • 12/06/2023 Fanyu passed his Ph.D. QE on "Improving Explainability through Cohort Explanation" today. Congrats, Fanyu!
  • 11/27/2023 Thomas completed his MS thesis on "Demonstration of a Digital Twin of a Laser Ablated Aluminum Alloy 6061 Disk for Fault Detection and Process Control". Congrats, Thomas!
  • 11/21/2023 Dr. Kong gave a talk on "Drones and Fire Hazards: Where There's Smoke, There's Fire" at MATLAB and Simulink Seminar Series "Fire and Ice, Earth and Oceans."
  • 11/17/2023 Ashwitha completed her MS project on "A Spiking Neural Network for Multi-channel EEG Recordings during Sustained-driving Attention Task." Congrats, Ashwitha!
  • 11/01/2023 Dr. Kong will be a topic editor for "Insights in Intelligent Aerospace Systems" at Frontiers in Aerospace Engineering.

In the Press

Location

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