Electrical and Computer Engineering

Autonomous blimps take flight at EagleBank Arena: 2nd annual Airborne Robotics Cup inspires future STEM innovators

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:04:00 +0000

Autonomous blimps take flight at EagleBank Arena: 2nd annual Airborne Robotics Cup inspires future STEM innovators Nathan Kahl Tue, 09/08/2026 - 15:04

In This Story

The floor of EagleBank Arena buzzed with high-tech aerial excitement on August 15 as 91�� hosted the culmination of the second annual Airborne Robotics Cup (ARC 2026). The STEM outreach competition ran an intense 12-hour tournament featuring dynamic, lighter-than-air autonomous blimp “soccer” matches.

Lighter-than-air vehicles prepare for battle. Photo credit Yidi Huang.

ARC was founded and organized by Ningshi Yao, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and director of the Control, Intelligent Autonomy, and Optimization (CIAO) Lab. It was co-organized by the Capital Youth Outreach Club (CYOC).

The initiative serves as a core component of Yao’s National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award. As part of the award’s integrated education plan, it translates university research in robotics, control theory, and autonomous systems into transformative hands-on learning for K-12 students, with vital venue, equipment, and organizational backing from the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) and the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC).

The tournament received enthusiastic support and on-site participation from CEC leadership and its academic departments. Ariela Sofer, divisional dean of the Volgenau School of Engineering, kicked off the morning session by encouraging students to pursue curiosity and explore the expansive possibilities within engineering. During the evening awards ceremony, Amarda Shehu, associate dean for research, celebrated the students’ accomplishments and underscored the transformative impact of early engagement with robotics and artificial intelligence, alongside Alex Sprintson, ECE chair, who recognized the exceptional ingenuity and technical rigor demonstrated by the competitors.

Alex Sprintson, ECE department Chair; Ariela Sofer, divisional dean of the Volgenau School of Engineering; student Ningshi Yao; student Aaron Liu; and Capital Youth Outreach Club co-organizer Jun Zhao. Photo credit John Liu.

Adding to the strong departmental support, Pelin Kurtay, ECE associate chair, attended to engage with participants and cheer on the young roboticists. Leigh McCue, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, joined the morning awards session to deliver encouraging remarks on multidisciplinary engineering and present awards to the winning teams across the morning’s two competition groups.

Building on last year's debut success, ARC expanded exponentially in 2026. The program received more than 180 applications, and through a highly competitive selection process, 16 talented finalist teams comprising more than 80 middle and high school students earned spots in the tournament.

Rather than a standalone one-day competition, ARC represents a comprehensive two-month summer engineering program. Over the past seven weeks, students dedicated their weekends to four intensive in-person training sessions and four hands-on practice sessions at MARC. Led by Yao, alongside ECE PhD student Ahnaf Asif Khan, graduate student Yojan Gautam, and former George Mason Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program participants Adam Bhatti and Harry Yu, the mentorship team taught students foundational mechatronics skills from the ground up, including soldering, assembling basic blimp kits, embedded programming, and custom 3D printing.

Student leadership and authentic engineering problem-solving took center stage throughout ARC2026. Reflecting on the engineering hurdles of lighter-than-air robotics, Lucas Liu, a junior from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and captain of Team 14, noted, "Working with blimps taught our team very quickly that every single gram matters. Through constant iteration, we redesigned parts and switched to lighter microcontrollers, bringing the total weight down to 70% of the original."

Aaron Liu, captain of Team 12 and representing his team from Luther Jackson Middle School, echoed the value of hands-on troubleshooting, "Building and flying a robot is a lot more complicated than watching one fly. Engineering problems don’t always happen when it's convenient, and solutions don't come linearly. You just have to keep going one step at a time," said Aaron.

Reflecting on the broader impact and purpose of the initiative, Yao emphasized the long-term growth of the participants. "ARC is far more than just a competition," said Yao. "It is a launchpad for lifelong skills, including problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, and resilience. Today is a celebration of taking ideas from concept to reality, embracing setbacks, and learning through hands-on trial and error."

Winning teams celebrate their achievements alongside faculty and mentors during the awards presentation. Photo credit Yidi Huang.

That transformative experience resonated strongly with families across the community. "Your continuous support, patience, guidance, and extra effort meant so much to them and to us as parents," shared Sisi Jou, parent of Team 15 competitor Skylon Jou. "Skylon already said he definitely wants to participate again next year and hopes to come back even stronger!"

Building on the tremendous energy and success of this second edition, the CIAO Lab and its partners are already preparing to expand ARC for summer 2027 by increasing team capacity, broadening community outreach, and continuing to cement George Mason as a premier hub for youth robotics innovation.

Topics

lighter-than-air robotics

Electrical and Computer Engineering

STEM outreach

EagleBank Arena

robotics

Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center

National Science Foundation

Students

Designing deeper data center defense

Nathan Kahl — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 01:25:30 +0000

Designing deeper data center defense Nathan Kahl Thu, 09/03/2026 - 21:25

In This Story

Kai Zeng

Liling Huang

As artificial intelligence (AI) drives rapid growth in data centers, the facilities powering the technology are becoming more complex, more valuable, and potentially more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Two 91�� researchers want to help close security gaps before attackers can exploit them.

Liling Huang. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Kai Zeng and Liling Huang, a professor and associate professor, respectively, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, are developing new approaches to protect AI data centers from threats ranging from insiders stealing valuable AI models to cyberattacks against the systems controlling a facility’s power and cooling.

Zeng and Huang received $100,000 from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority through the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Northern Virginia Node for “Defense-in-Depth Cyber-Physical Security for AI Data Centers.” The one-year project examines vulnerabilities that traditional cybersecurity approaches may not fully address, including the increasingly complicated intersection of information technology, operational technology, and building-management systems.

“It’s a very urgent and emerging topic,” Zeng said. “Just look at how many new AI data centers are built every year, every month.” The issue has particular resonance in Virginia, which has the world’s largest concentration of data center infrastructure and is rapidly becoming a hub for large-scale AI computing.

AI data centers present new challenges because the systems differ from conventional data centers, Huang said. Operators in traditional facilities have years of experience understanding normal activity, making anomalies easy to identify. With AI infrastructure, that baseline is still developing.

“With AI data centers, we are still learning about their operational behavior and how it affects both behind-the-meter electrical systems and the broader power grid,” Huang said. “This uncertainty makes cybersecurity more challenging because, when abnormal behavior occurs, it can be difficult to distinguish a cyberattack from a legitimate equipment or power-system issue.”

The researchers will investigate three areas. One is communication among the clusters of graphics processing units (GPUs) used for AI computing. Their extremely fast connections can make monitoring activity difficult. “It’s harder to monitor the traffic exchange there between the GPUs, which could be a kind of blind spot from a security perspective,” Zeng said.

Another focus is protecting what’s known as “checkpoints,” snapshots of an AI model’s state created during training. Training a large AI model can take weeks. At intervals, the system saves the model's current state, including what it has learned so far. That saved state is the checkpoint, which can contain valuable intellectual property, making them potential targets for tampering or insider attacks. The researchers plan to explore whether data collected from systems throughout the data center, known as telemetry, can help verify that a checkpoint is authentic.

Kai Zeng. Photo by Office of University Branding

The third area involves the boundary between IT systems and operational technology, including systems controlling power and cooling. “Someone does not necessarily have to directly hack into the server, because they can just disrupt the building management system,” Zeng said.

The project benefits from the researchers’ complementary expertise. Huang explained that cybersecurity practices have traditionally been more mature in information technology systems, while operational technology has emphasized reliability, safety, availability, and engineering performance. Zeng brings cybersecurity expertise, while Huang contributes expertise in AI data centers, electrical and mechanical systems, and the power grid. Together, they will work to strengthen cybersecurity protections for the operational technology systems of AI data centers.

The team plans to produce a data center threat model, prototype security technologies, experimental results, and at least one peer-reviewed publication. The seed project is also intended to position the researchers for larger federal and industry-funded projects.

Zeng hopes the initial investment can provide the foundation for something considerably larger. “We can apply later to turn this $100,000 project into, potentially, $1 million,” he said. “Start small, but scale up, and scale big.”

Topics

Cyber Security

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Artificial Intelligence

Research

College of Engineering and Computing

data centers

George Mason researcher is using CAREER award to build brain-inspired AI that is more adaptive

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:49:00 +0000

George Mason researcher is using CAREER award to build brain-inspired AI that is more adaptive Nathan Kahl Tue, 07/07/2026 - 14:49

In This Story

Maryam Parsa

Though artificial intelligence (AI) is making extraordinary advances, today's AI systems still have significant limitations. They often require enormous computing power and energy (not to mention well-documented water usage), struggle to adapt when conditions change, and can make decisions in ways that are difficult for humans to interpret, validate, or trust.

Maryam Parsa. Photo provided

Maryam Parsa, assistant professor in 91��'s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, believes those shortcomings point toward a compelling source of inspiration: the human brain.

Parsa received a five-year, $655,000 National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for developing a new framework for brain-inspired AI. The project seeks to make AI systems more efficient, adaptable, resilient, and transparent by borrowing principles from biological nervous systems.

"AI was originally inspired by the brain," Parsa said. "Concepts such as neurons, synapses, and neural networks drew inspiration from how brains process information. But over time, AI has moved farther away from those biological principles.”

Parsa believes researchers now have an opportunity to reconnect AI and neuroscience. “Neuroscience advanced tremendously over the past few decades, with only a small fraction of those discoveries finding their way into AI systems.”

As computing power grew, researchers found AI systems could make major gains by scaling neural networks and training them on massive datasets. The approach, fueled by increasingly powerful computers, is leading to significant breakthroughs, particularly with the rise of large language models (LLMs).

"They are producing remarkable devices," she said. "The progress we see in LLMs and modern AI grew out of relatively simple neural-network ideas. Over time, researchers added more layers, more data, more computational power, and more sophisticated training methods, leading to powerful systems.”

The goal is not to replace today's successful AI systems with direct copies of the brain. Instead, her research focuses on areas where current AI falls short. "We know some of the key challenges AI still faces," she said. "It can be difficult to understand how these systems reach their decisions, and they do not always transfer well when conditions, data, or environments change. That is where biological intelligence can offer useful design principles.”

When today’s AI systems encounter unfamiliar environments or changing conditions, they often need to be retrained or fine-tuned. Biological intelligence, however, is remarkably adaptable and energy efficient, offering clues to how future AI systems could learn and respond more flexibly.

Her CAREER project builds a unified framework around three characteristics of biological intelligence. The first pillar, dimensionality, examines how the brain creates meaningful representations of the world rather than simply processing raw information. The second, heterogeneity, explores the brain's remarkable diversity. Rather than relying on identical neurons performing tasks, biological brains contain many neuron types with distinct behaviors. "The brain is not copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste,” she said.

The third pillar, nonlinearity, draws inspiration from the retina, which performs extensive processing before visual information reaches the brain. "It's not like the raw pixels go directly to our central brain," Parsa said. "The retina digests and processes the information first."

Parsa said the broader idea is combining these principles into a more biologically inspired approach to AI. “If I know how to process my input, create a better representation of my environment, and leverage this massive heterogeneity, then I can move AI a little closer to the way biological intelligence works,” she said.

Beyond advancing AI research, the project includes an educational effort to help students see how ideas from the brain can shape the future of computing and artificial intelligence. Parsa plans to bring these concepts into graduate courses, hands-on hackathons, and STEM outreach activities for K-12 students, creating new pathways for students to explore the intersection of neuroscience, engineering, and AI.

Topics

large language models

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty

National Science Foundation

Research

Artificial Intelligence

C-TASC

91�� engineering professor awarded Office of Naval Research grant to launch 'NEXT' mechatronics workforce program

Martha Bushong — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 12:45:35 +0000

91�� engineering professor awarded Office of Naval Research grant to launch 'NEXT' mechatronics workforce program Martha Bushong Fri, 03/20/2026 - 08:45

91�� faculty member Ningshi Yao received a $750k grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to establish a hands-on mechatronics training program aimed at building the next generation of high-tech engineering technologists.

The three-year funding will support the creation of the Natural EXTension (NEXT) program. As emerging technologies like autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing continue to expand, the NEXT program will serve the national interest by providing students with rigorous, experiential learning opportunities directly aligned with defense and industry workforce needs.

Ningshi Yao. Photo provided.

"Traditional classroom learning is essential, but engineering is ultimately about building systems that work reliably in the real world," said Yao, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, director of the Control, Intelligent Autonomy, and Optimization Lab, and the sole principal investigator on the project. "With the NEXT program, we are implementing a 'flipped classroom' model. Students will review video lectures and technical instructions as their homework, allowing us to dedicate our entire class time to building and testing the mechatronic vehicles. This highly dynamic 'learning-by-doing' approach prepares students for the complex problem-solving required in today's high-tech workforce."

The program, which will welcome its pilot class in fall 2026, moves beyond standard laboratory exercises. A centerpiece of the NEXT curriculum is a high-stakes endurance mechatronics competition. Student teams will be challenged to design, build, and deploy autonomous mechatronic vehicles during a 72-hour rapid prototyping sprint, followed by a live, 90-minute competitive match on an outdoor field.

This intense environment forces participants to manage limited resources, modify hardware, program the systems on the fly, and ensure their systems can handle unpredictable real-world elements like uneven terrain and weather.

"We want to push students' engineering creativity and strategic thinking to the absolute limit," said Yao. "By bridging the gap between academic theory and rigorous physical deployment, we are ensuring our graduates are job-ready for defense and tech industry roles from day one."

George Mason is already known as one of the commonwealth's largest producers of tech talent. The NEXT program will further support the university’s efforts in building Virginia’s high-tech workforce by creating a regional talent pipeline.

"Relationships between universities and industry are common, but integrating direct, hands-on challenges that mirror the complexities of defense operations makes this initiative unique," Yao added.

This project is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research under award number N00014-26-1-2153.

In This Story

Ningshi Yao

Explore Research at George Mason

Topics

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Workforce Development

CEC faculty research

Research

Defense and Security

Brainpower inspires energy-efficient AI

tdonnel — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:57:20 +0000

Brainpower inspires energy-efficient AI tdonnel Thu, 01/22/2026 - 11:57

The key to energy-efficient artificial intelligence (AI) could lie in the human brain. 91�� researchers Maryam Parsa (PI) and Giorgio Ascoli (co-PI) are leading a Department of Energy-funded project to make AI dramatically more efficient by mimicking the brain’s computing strategies.

Maryam Parsa. Photo provided.

“AI today is powerful but extremely energy-hungry,” said Parsa, an assistant professor in George Mason’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who specializes in neuromorphic computing. “We want to understand why the human brain is so efficient and why AI is not—and then bridge that gap.”

Unlike traditional AI models that rely on continuous signals and massive data centers, the brain uses sparse, event-driven signals called spikes.

“Any one neuron only fires a spike here and there, but the timing of those spikes carries a lot of meaning,” explained Ascoli, a Distinguished University Professor in George Mason’s Bioengineering Department specializing in neuroscience. “That’s why the brain can do so much with so little energy.”

To replicate this efficiency holistically, Parsa and Ascoli teamed up with Akhilesh Jaiswal at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Pedram Khalili at Northwestern University. The team is building a full-stack neuromorphic computing system spanning devices, circuits, architectures, algorithms, and applications.

Each principal investigator is contributing specific expertise to the system:

Ascoli contributes neuroscience insights using Izhikevich models, mathematical frameworks that capture real neuron spiking dynamics, to inform system design.
Khalili develops spintronic devices, components that utilize magnetic materials to harness an electron's quantum properties of spin and charge for processing and storing data. By naturally exhibiting neuron-like temporal behavior, these devices are expected to reduce energy demands.
Jaiswal designs analog circuits to integrate these spintronic devices into functional architectures.
Parsa leads the project as well as neuromorphic learning algorithms and application-level integration, exploring diverse learning approaches to optimize speed, precision, resiliency, privacy, and energy savings.

Giorgio Ascoli. Photo provided.

“Izhikevich models allow neuromorphic systems to mimic the timing, diversity, and variability of real neurons, enabling more brain-like learning and efficiency,” Ascoli said. His extensive experience with these models, including simulating hippocampal networks, provides the biological foundation for the project.

“Instead of forcing existing devices to mimic brain behavior, we asked: What if we leverage new devices that naturally exhibit these dynamics?” Parsa said. This approach ensures innovations at the hardware level align with biologically inspired algorithms, creating a cohesive system rather than isolated solutions.

By introducing greater biological complexity and leveraging novel spintronic devices, the team hopes to reduce AI’s energy footprint while improving performance metrics such as accuracy and privacy. Early results are promising; even simple changes to spike distributions improved privacy without sacrificing accuracy.

The research also explores learning algorithms beyond the traditional. “Our goal is to see how different neuron models and learning rules interact and which combinations optimize for speed, precision, or energy savings,” Parsa said.

Ultimately, the project could transform AI by making it greener and more brain-like. “If we succeed, we’ll have systems that learn faster, consume less power, and operate more like the brain,” said Ascoli.

“This is not just about making AI more efficient,” said Parsa. “It’s about rethinking computing from the ground up."

In This Story

Maryam Parsa

Giorgio Ascoli

Explore AI at George Mason

Topics

Bioengineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Energy

C-TASC

A calibration from campus to the cosmos

Nathan Kahl — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:48:15 +0000

A calibration from campus to the cosmos  Nathan Kahl Fri, 08/15/2025 - 10:48

91�� is the home of the $20 million Landolt NASA Space Mission, placing a satellite that will serve as an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth…and College of Engineering and Computing students are instrumental in the payload’s construction. It’s experience that not only significantly bolsters a resume, but also allows students to work on a project of their dreams.  

Fatima Bahzad, a computer science graduate student said, “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in school.”  

Bahzad said that working on the mission is the most fun she's had at George Mason. Photo provided.

Bahzad explained her role: “The satellite, which is about the size of a bread box, is comprised of layers and each layer has a chip and the chips need to talk to each other. There’s also a primary chip that sends commands to all of them. I’m working on the communication between the chips.”

Getting an opportunity to turn theory into practice is incredibly gratifying, she said. “Learning theoretical stuff is one thing, but applying it is another. This is one of the first opportunities I’ve had to work on something ‘real.’” 

The payload is being built in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with whom the teams checks in frequently. The artificial star will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies. By establishing absolute flux calibration, the mission will address several open challenges in astrophysics, including the speed and acceleration of the universe expansion. 

On the engineering side, the project is led by Piotr Pachowicz, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Pachowicz brought PhD student Jay Deorukhkar, one of his advisees, onto the project.  

Deorukhkar said he’s been working on testing the individual payload modules. These will later integrate with the satellite bus, which is the core structure and support system that is separate from the specific payload. Reliability of small satellite buses against radiation effects is also the subject of his dissertation, making this work particularly relevant.  

Deorukhkar is working on his second project that will send an object into space. Photo provided.

“My role as an engineer is to help design, prototype, and test specific payload components. We’re early in the design stage, working towards the preliminary design review of our payload.” He added, “The great thing about this project is really the end-to-end experience, from the inception of the mission  to the actual launch and operation of the science payload.”  

Deorukhkar has some experience with that, having worked on the ThinSat project in 2021, which sent a small satellite into low earth orbit. He knows about the anxiety as the launch date nears. “It's a bone-chilling moment when the rocket starts and you know your device is on there and it’s out of your hands at that point. You can only pray and trust that everything you've learned and you've done just works.”  

Bahzad is still trying to keep her feet planted on the ground, so to speak, at times overwhelmed to be part of something so significant. “We met recently with some people from NASA and I was just sitting in the corner and couldn’t believe it. I was just thinking, ‘This is so cool!’”   

Housed in the George Mason College of Science, the mission launches in 2029, when the artificial star will orbit earth 22,236 miles up, far enough away to look like a star to telescopes back on Earth. This orbit also allows it to move at the same speed of the Earth’s rotation, keeping it in place over the United States during its first  year in space. 

Mason faculty and students will work together with nine other organizations beyond NASA and NIST on this first-of-its-kind project for a university in the Washington, D.C., area. 

In This Story

Peter Pachowicz

Learn more about the Grand Challenge Initiative

Topics

Space

Electrical and Computer Engineering

satellite

NASA

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST

Students

Aerospace

GCI-Space

Engineering better vision: George Mason professors lead $1.17M NIH project

Martha Bushong — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:12:10 +0000

Engineering better vision: George Mason professors lead $1.17M NIH project Martha Bushong Wed, 07/30/2025 - 15:12

In This Story

Ningshi Yao

Quentin Sanders

Qi Wei

Understanding and treating complex eye movement disorders like strabismus has long been a challenge for clinicians. Now, researchers at 91�� are pioneering a new approach using robotics and artificial intelligence to engineer a better future for vision care.

Ningshi Yao, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious $1.17 million R01 grant to lead a groundbreaking four-year project. The award comes from the joint National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) "Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science (SCH)" program.

The funded project, "Study Coordinated Human Eye Movement and Strabismus Using a Novel Artificial Muscle-Driven Robotic Eyes," will be conducted in collaboration with co-investigators Qi Wei and Quentin Sanders from George Mason’s Department of Bioengineering and consultant Joseph Demer in the Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

From left: Qi Wei (Bioengineering Department), Ningshi Yao (Electrical and Computer Engineering Department), and Quentin Sanders (Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering Departments). Photo provided

At the core of the research is the creation of robotic eyes powered by artificial muscles that replicate the precise, coordinated movements of human eyes. “Strabismus affects more than 18 million Americans, yet current treatments often fall short, with success rates ranging from 30 to 80%,” said Yao. “Our goal is to use robotic systems and artificial intelligence to better understand how the eyes work—and ultimately improve how we diagnose and treat these disorders.”

The research team will build robotic eyes that closely mimic human biomechanics and use them as tools to study the underlying causes of strabismus. These systems will allow for a level of control and repeatability not possible in human subjects, offering a unique window into how eye muscles and connective tissues—especially the so-called “pulleys”—work together to guide vision.

To make the robotic system truly intelligent, the project will also apply reinforcement learning, a type of artificial intelligence, to discover how humans naturally control eye movements. By training the robots with real patient data and expert-informed objectives, the team hopes to reverse-engineer the strategies humans use—leading to better understanding and new treatment pathways.

In the final phase of the project, the team will integrate patient-specific data into the robotic system to simulate different surgical outcomes. This will allow ophthalmologists to test and refine treatment strategies before operating, increasing precision and improving long-term results.

The project’s impact extends beyond eye health. The robotic muscle actuators and control models developed here could advance robotics, AI, biomechanics, and even the design of soft, adaptive machines.

In addition to scientific discoveries, the research team will build educational tools and training platforms using the robotic eyes, helping to prepare the next generation of vision specialists.

Topics

CEC faculty research

Bioengineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering

National Science Foundation

National Institutes of Health

Research

Drones and rovers save the day at Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2025

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:18:35 +0000

Drones and rovers save the day at Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2025 Jennifer Pocock Thu, 05/01/2025 - 14:18

As the saying goes, if you love something, set it free. If it maps an area, finds a target, delivers a package, and comes back, the trophy is yours forever. Or something like that.

The Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition Team poses with their ground and air robots. Photo by Jenn Pocock

The black quadcopter drone surveyed the field in two quick swoops against a cloud-heavy sky. In just a matter of seconds, it picked up a signal and flew to the sidelines where it landed itself. A small ground rover took off, bumping over the grass to drop a first aid kit a few feet from the goal. Team members on the side of the field exploded with cheers and high fives.

The entire search and rescue took less than two minutes.

Senior electrical engineering student Qeon Edwards jumped with joy at just how well and how quickly their vehicles performed. “What, you doubted us?” he laughed, obviously relieved.

It was late in April when five teams gathered at the Xelevate drone ecosystem field in Leesburg, Virginia, to test their autonomous programming mettle via ground and air vehicles. This was 91��’s second year in the competition, which they won last year. The team consisted of 16 students ranging from sophomores to PhDs in computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. As the reigning champs, they had a lot to prove.

A quadcopter takes off from the starting line to search for its target, as the rover and judges stand by. Photo by Jenn Pocock

The challenge rules change every year, so the team can’t just copy their predecessors’ codes. “Last year was basically a game of tag,” said Xuesu Xiao, assistant professor of computer science and the team’s faculty lead. They had to fly a drone around to squirt water on their opponents’ ground vehicles while avoiding their own.

This year, instead of trying to shoot others down, they had to perform a rescue mission: Find a randomly assigned “survivor” in a field of battle and send first aid. The faster the find and the closer the kit, the higher the score.

“Our strategy was for a drone to scout the area first, find the target, and then drive another ground vehicle robot to deliver the first-aid kit,” said Xiao.

The team programmed six flying drones and a ground robot that communicated with one another—and nothing else. That means that the programmers had no immediate control over the vehicles; they set their autonomous creations free and hoped that they did a good job coding them.

Judges measure the distance from the target to the rover-delivered first aid kit. Photo by Jenn Pocock

Overall, their robots performed exceptionally, managing to cut their delivery time and distance to less than a minute and 57 inches, respectively. They were just nudged out, however, by first-place University of Southern Florida and second-place Virginia Tech.

“It was definitely very tight between the top three!” said Cameron Nowzari, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering. “There was only a two-point difference between first and second, and one point between second and third.”

Still, the team wasn’t disappointed with how they performed. Their robots were a labor of love, and they met the challenge in a big way.

In This Story

Xuesu Xiao

Cameron Nowzari

Sea life defended the republic

Jennifer Pocock — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 15:34:12 +0000

Sea life defended the republic Jennifer Pocock Tue, 04/29/2025 - 11:34

The bioinspired blimps performed swimmingly.

Blimp Squad members Elijah Pointer and Kareem Zaharan (seniors in mechanical engineering) reach for a balloon captured in Narly's net as Faculty Adviser Daigo Shishika looks on. Photo by Jenn Pocock

Narly glided toward the ceiling of 91��'s Life Science and Engineering Building aviary like a shiny beluga whale with undulating manta-ray wings and a rudder tail. Thomas Girois, a senior in mechanical engineering and Narly’s team lead, flipped on the blimp’s autonomous goal-seeking program to show off its ability to target airborne objects. He hopes it will head toward the balloon that he wants to capture. But it made an unexpected turn and instead nosed the high bay windows, where it wouldn’t move despite its programmed back-up function.

After a moment of confusion, Girois laughed. “It’s outsmarted us again!”

Narly’s microcontroller and camera was coded to recognize and hunt down green and purple airborne objects—which is exactly what it did when it registered the glowing green Exit sign on the ceiling outside the window. Still, the test boded well for the upcoming competition.

Narly was one of three sea life–inspired Lighter Than Air (LTA) vehicles to compete on George Mason’s Blimp Squad in the Defend the Republic (DTR) contest from April 21 – 25, 2025.

The Blimp Squad lines up with their devices, ready to go on the offense. Photo by Jenn Pocock

Flappy, another manta ray blimp, has a larger rudder tail that allows it to make pinpoint midair turns, and Knifey, inspired by the knifefish, has a long, undulating frill along its belly—and a fierce expression. These designs differ from their competitors’, which rely on propellers for propulsion and steering.

“Using propellers is easier,” said Daigo Shishika, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and one of the Blimp Squad’s faculty advisers. “But the big surface areas of our flapping wings are more efficient. Propeller-driven blimps need to carry more batteries, which are heavy and drain fast.”

Shishika noted that contestants lose points if they hurt another team’s blimp, which is always a risk with propellers.

Alexia De Costa (sophomore, computer science) follows under the fearsome Knifey, whose underbelly frill was inspired by the knifefish. Photo by Jenn Pocock

“We’re hoping to get more agility and a safer blimp,” he said.

Ningshi Yao, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the squad’s other faculty adviser, also pointed out the blimps’ winning personalities. “Our flappies are pretty attractive robots,” she said. “Human-robot interaction is important. You want humans to like being around it!”

One DTR spectator, upon seeing Flappy fly for the first time, confirmed this theory. “It’s so cute!” she gasped. “I would die for Flappy.”

After hundreds of hours of testing, Narly, Flappy, and Knifey joined their two defense blimps—a zippy acrobatic wonder called Space Fish, and a high-scoring high-flier called Backbone Junior—to play a midair game of capturing balloons and releasing them through hoops to score goals.

Knifey's fierce expression intimidates the competition. Photo by:Jenn Pocock.

The team took third place out of six and scored the second-most points of all the teams.

“One highlight for me personally was that the flapping wing blimp achieved fully autonomous scoring for the first time since its first debut in the spring of 2023,” said Shishika. “It started as an exploratory agent that was primarily for research, but after two years and four competitions, Flappy finally contributed to the team by scoring 70 points.”

Narly also scored its first autonomous points.

While the team may not have taken first place, their sea-inspired research won the week.

Check out these shorts on our Youtube channel to see the vehicles and their designers in action.

In This Story

Daigo Shishika

Ningshi Yao

Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason

Topics

lighter-than-air robotics

robotics and autonomous systems

competitions

mechanical engineering

Applied computer science

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Students

High schoolers explore renewable energy engineering at Mason Square summer camp

tdonnel — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 16:39:36 +0000

High schoolers explore renewable energy engineering at Mason Square summer camp tdonnel Mon, 08/26/2024 - 12:39

Fourteen local high school students from six school districts spent a week in August delving into renewable energy engineering at 91��’s Exploring Renewable Energy Engineering Summer Camp, held at Mason Square. Liling Huang, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Dominion Energy Faculty Fellow, led the camp sponsored by Amazon Web Services (AWS) from August 5 to 9.

Students learn about solar panels during the Exploring Renewable Energy Engineering Summer Camp. Photo courtesy of the Power Grid Lab.

Throughout the week, students engaged in activities designed to spark their interest in environmental stewardship and engineering excellence. The camp offered a mix of interactive sessions, hands-on labs, and group projects, all aimed at providing a foundational understanding of renewable energy engineering. Industry professionals from organizations such as Dominion Energy and the Solar Hands-On Instructional Network of Excellence (SHINE) contributed their expertise, giving students real-world insights into the energy sector.

The camp culminated in a two-part event on the final day. First, a panel of renewable energy professionals shared their experiences and advice with the campers. Panelists represented a broad spectrum of the industry, including AES Corporation, AWS, Dominion Energy, Hispanics in Energy, MPR Associates, Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC), and SHINE.

Students work on model town during the Exploring Renewable Energy Engineering Summer Camp. Photo courtesy of the Power Grid Lab.

"You all are choosing a field that's very exciting, and there's really an opportunity for you to have huge impact, whether it's here or abroad," said George Mason’s Liza Wilson Durant, Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement, addressing the campers as she introduced the panelists.

The panelists discussed the future energy landscape, the integration of renewable resources with traditional power grids, and the various career paths available in the power and energy sector. They also highlighted the importance of continuous learning and flexibility.

SHINE Executive Director David Peterson summed up his advice with a lyric by the Avett Brothers: “Decide what to be, and go be it.” He emphasized the importance of committing to a path without being overly concerned with immediate decisions. Nicholas Lee-Romagnolo, program lead of workforce and economic development at AWS, agreed, explaining that careers are more like jungle gyms than ladders: There are many different paths upward.

Industry panel closing GMU Exploring Renewable Energy Engineering Summer Camp. Photo courtesy of the Power Grid Lab.

Lee-Romagnolo also advised the campers to pay attention to the culture of their environment throughout their academic and professional careers.

“It's very difficult to change the culture that you go into. Often you as an individual change and become more like that culture, so be aware of and thoughtful about those groups that you enter into,” he explained, adding, “None of us learns or works individually, and the team that you choose will matter every single time.”

Following the panel, the students presented their main project—a model town powered entirely by renewable, clean energy. The model featured working offshore wind turbines and small solar panels that powered a lamp and fans inside the town's model houses and data centers. The students took on various roles in planning the town, addressing engineering, financial, regulatory, and social challenges. The model town was designed as a coastal Virginia community, with considerations for local population dynamics and environmental sustainability.

The campers expressed pride in their work, noting how much they had learned during the week. When asked who was planning to study energy engineering in the future, twelve of the fourteen students raised their hands.

CEC Dean Ken Ball with staff and campers of Exploring Renewable Energy Engineering Summer Camp. Photo by Bonnie Crews.

Dive deeper into Electrical and Computer Engineering

In This Story

Liling Huang

Liza Wilson Durant

Topics

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Autonomous blimps take flight at EagleBank Arena: 2nd annual Airborne Robotics Cup inspires future STEM innovators

In This Story

Topics

Designing deeper data center defense

In This Story

Topics

George Mason researcher is using CAREER award to build brain-inspired AI that is more adaptive

In This Story

Topics

91�� engineering professor awarded Office of Naval Research grant to launch 'NEXT' mechatronics workforce program

In This Story

Related Stories

Topics

Brainpower inspires energy-efficient AI

In This Story

Related Stories

Topics

A calibration from campus to the cosmos

In This Story

Related Stories

Topics

Engineering better vision: George Mason professors lead $1.17M NIH project

In This Story

Topics

Drones and rovers save the day at Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2025

In This Story

Related Stories

Sea life defended the republic

In This Story

Related News

Topics

High schoolers explore renewable energy engineering at Mason Square summer camp

In This Story

Related News

Topics

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Autonomous blimps take flight at EagleBank Arena: 2nd annual Airborne Robotics Cup inspires future STEM innovators

In This Story

Topics

Designing deeper data center defense

In This Story

Topics

George Mason researcher is using CAREER award to build brain-inspired AI that is more adaptive

In This Story

Topics

91���� engineering professor awarded Office of Naval Research grant to launch 'NEXT' mechatronics workforce program

In This Story

Related Stories

Topics

Brainpower inspires energy-efficient AI

In This Story

Related Stories

Topics

A calibration from campus to the cosmos

In This Story

Related Stories

Topics

Engineering better vision: George Mason professors lead $1.17M NIH project

In This Story

Topics

Drones and rovers save the day at Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2025

In This Story

Related Stories

Sea life defended the republic

In This Story

Related News

Topics

High schoolers explore renewable energy engineering at Mason Square summer camp

In This Story

Related News

Topics

91�� engineering professor awarded Office of Naval Research grant to launch 'NEXT' mechatronics workforce program