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
  • Cognitive-aware human-autonomy teaming
  • Augmented humans via neural engineering
  • Autonomous UAS and UAS swarms
  • AI, aerial robotics, and control for agricultural, environmental, neural engineering, and defense applications

Our lab accepts students from MAE, CS, and BME. If you are interested in joining our lab, please read this first before contacting us.

Recent Lab News


  • 09/30/20 UC Davis has received a five-year, $36 million contract (with Prof. Karen Moxon as the PI) from DARPA to develop interventions for spinal cord injuries that can be applied within days of injury. Our lab will be involved in assessing the impact of these interventions on the brain. We are very excited in joining the endeavor!
  • 09/10/20 Our lab has received a $1 million research grant from NSF on "NCS-FO: Identification and control of neural cognitive systems"! We will work with Prof. Jochen Ditterich from the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience on this project.We are very excited for the project!
  • 08/26/20 UC Davis will lead a $20 million new artificial intelligence institute "AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems (AIFS)" sponsored by USDA. Our lab will be part of the foundational AI research thrust of the institute. We are very excited in joining the endeavor!
  • 07/24/20 Our paper "Multi-Agent Cooperative Attack-Defense Strategy Against One Single Attacker" is now available online at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
  • 07/17/20 Our paper "Data-Driven Real-Timed-Failure-Propagation-Graph Refinement for Complex System Fault Diagnosis" is now available online at the IEEE Control Systems Letters.
  • 07/01/20 Dr. Kong has been promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure).
  • 06/19/20 Our lab has received a seed grant from the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Core Center (funded by NIH) for the project “Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) for Large-Scale, Real-Time, Human-Health-Related Data Collection during Wild and Prescribed Fires”. 
  • 06/10/20 Our paper "Optimal Control of a Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based on a Multiphysical Model" has been accepted by the ASME 2020 Dynamic Systems and Control Conference (DSCC). Congrats to Nicolas!
  • 06/10/20 Felipe Valdez has successfully completed his MS project "Low-Level Control of a Fixed-Wing UAV via Deep Reinforcement Learning" today! He will join NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center as an Aerospace Engineer. Congrats to Felipe. We wish him a bright future!
  • 05/18/20 Our lab alumnus April Teske has started a new job at Boeing, where she will customize F-15 fighter jets for the Air Force. Congrats to April! We wish her a bright future!
  • 04/14/20 Our paper "Temporal-Logic-Based Semantic Fault Diagnosis with Time-Series Data from Industrial Internet of Things" is now available online at the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.
  • 04/10/20 Ryan (Jiawei) Liang has been selected as one of the 2020 X-Force Fellows. He will work with the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar. Congrats to Ryan!
  • 04/01/20 Our lab has received a research grant from ONR on "Safety-Assured Apprenticeship Learning for Vision-Based Control of UAS in Riverine Environments". If you are a UC Davis student, a veteran or active-duty military student, and would like to learn more about UAV and AI and be immersed in a research environment, please contact Dr. Kong.
  • 02/18/20 Gang Chen gave his PhD exist seminar on "Human-Computer Collaborative Specification, Analysis, and Design of Safety-Assured Cyber-Physical Systems" today. Congrats to Gang! We wish him a bright future!
  • 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!
  • 01/14/20 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 at the Journal of Economic Entomology.
  • 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.
  • 11/15/19 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.

In the Press

Location

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