Professor Arthur Richards

Professor Arthur Richards
M.Eng.(Cantab.), S.M.(M.I.T.), Ph.D. (M.I.T.)

Professor of Robotics and Control

Area of research

Aerospace Guidance and Control

Office 1.35
Bristol Robotics Lab,
T Block, UWE Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane BS16 1QY
(See a map)

Tel. +44 (0) 117 331 5706
arthur.richards@
bristol.ac.uk

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 ...

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.

Recent publications

Greatwood, C & Richards, A, 2019, ‘Reinforcement learning and model predictive control for robust embedded quadrotor guidance and control’. Autonomous Robots.
Turnbull, ODN & Richards, AG, 2018, ‘Human Control of Air Traffic Trajectory Optimizer’. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol 19., pp. 1091-1099

Faculty of Engineering

Professor Arthur Richards