Tucson Standard

A University of Arizona (UArizona) professor recently received a three-year research grant. 

Roberto Furfaro is a professor of systems and industrial engineering at UArizona, according to a news release from the university. He was awarded $4.5 million to lead the development of improved guidance, navigation, and control systems for autonomous vehicles operating at hypersonic speeds. The grant is sponsored by the Joint Hypersonic Transition Office through the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH). 

"Many conventional systems are designed using linear theory and are not designed to fly or intercept at that speed," Furfaro said in the news release. "There are a lot of things happening in hypersonic flow that are so nonlinear that they are not fully understood and that we need to characterize if we want to design systems that work under these conditions."

David Hahn, the Craig M. Berge Dean of the College of Engineering at UArizona, spoke about the grant.

"This investment is a major win for our burgeoning hypersonic research program," Hahn said in the news release. "Roberto has a broad range of expertise in areas including space flight mechanics and machine learning, making him and his team exceptionally well-qualified to lead this effort."

The team will rely on meta-reinforcement learning – a type of machine learning – to train hypersonic systems to navigate and react to complex, high-speed situations, the news release noted.

"With meta-learning, we can train it not only on one scenario but on many scenarios," Furfaro said. "The system is able to learn over a distribution environment and every time, it converges faster to the next one. By enabling this continuous learning, we are basically able to have a system that continually adapts."

Robert Robbins, UArizona president, said the grant will help the university stay competitive in the market.

"The University of Arizona has a nationally prominent hypersonics research program which received $10 million in federal and state support in 2021 to enhance our research facilities," Robbins said in the news release. "Many of the field's top experts agree that artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role in the advancement of the field, and Professor Furfaro's receipt of this highly competitive grant will bring together many areas of expertise to advance this critical area."

The researchers will use data collected from simulations and wind tunnel tests "to characterize and create a simulated environment for training the adaptive brain of the system," according to the news release.

"We're incredibly supportive of the University of Arizona's work in developing hypersonic technologies and talent," Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon Missiles and Defense, said in the news release. "The advancements Professor Furfaro and his team will make to guidance, navigation, and control systems will directly impact our nation's ability to develop advanced hypersonic capabilities."