Autonomous Flight and Landing on Mars with Behçet Açikmeşe (Part 2)

Khari Douglas interviews Dr. Behçet Açikmeşe. Behçet was a technologist and a senior member of the Guidance and Control (G&C) Analysis Group at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 2003 to 2012 where he developed guidance, control, and estimation algorithms for formation-flying spacecraft and distributed networked systems, proximity operations around asteroids and comets, and planetary landing. He is currently a Professor in Aeronautics & Astronautics, as well as Electrical & Computer Engineering, at the University of Washington and a member of their Autonomous Controls Lab. In this episode, Dr. Acikmese discusses control theory and the University of Washington Autonomous Controls Lab. Timestamps to jump to certain topics below: Intro - (00:00) Control Systems and Spaceflight - (01:31) Convex vs. Non-convex Optimization - (10:25) Markov Decision Process - (14:02) Model Predictive Control - (19:43) Lossless Convexification - (21:04) University of Washington Autonomous Controls Lab - (25:00) Assured Autonomy - (31:15) Outro - (36:50)