Professor Arthur Richards

Research summary

I specialize in the application of trajectory optimization to problems in aerospace. Examples of recent work include:

• autonomous exploration of a cluttered environment by an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV)
• fuel-efficient rendezvous of spacecraft for Mars Sample Return mission
• robust air traffic flow management

This technologies involved include:

• non-convex optimization for avoidance constraints, such as obstacle avoidance or air traffic separation
• robust model predictive control, applying optimization in real time to compensate for disturbances and other uncertainty
• distributed optimization and control, enabling cooperation across large teams of vehicles

In all of the work, the challenges are to find solutions that are ...

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Biography

Dr Richards obtained a MEng from the University of Cambridge in 2000. He then went to the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he obtained a MSc in 2002 for research on trajectory optimization using Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP). He stayed at MIT and completed his PhD in 2004 with research on robust Model Predictive Control (MPC). He came to Bristol later in 2004 when he was appointed a lecturer in control and dynamics.

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Links

•   General information page
• Research blog

Recent publications

• Greatwood, C & Richards, AG, 2019, ‘Reinforcement learning and model predictive control for robust embedded quadrotor guidance and control’. Autonomous Robots, vol 43., pp. 1681-1693
• Schellenberg, B, Richardson, T, Richards, A, Clarke, R & Watson, M, 2019, ‘On-Board Real-Time Trajectory Planning for Fixed Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Extreme Environments’. Sensors, vol 19.

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View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system