Learning through Presentations

October 6, 2022

Students and faculty represented UIW at a recent conference

UIW students at the Digital Avionics Systems Conference “I was proud to be part of a cosmopolitan organization that drew intelligent, driven people from across the world.”

Those are the words Orion Jones, a senior Meteorology student, shared about the recent 41st AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC) several UIW students and faculty attended. At the conference, held in Portsmouth, Virginia, the Autonomous Vehicle Systems (AVS) Research Lab submitted a variety of papers on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs).

Jones, a veteran and chief meteorologist with the AVS Research Labs, and lead author Chyna Lane, a senior Cyber Security Systems major and the µDrone Lab principal investigator, presented a paper in poster form on Development of Semi-Autonomous Flight and Detection Systems Using Small Drones. The third author, veteran and UIW alumnus Christopher Miloro, attended to show support of the presentation. The team UIW students with their poster at the Digital Avionics Systems Conference won Best of Session in the Poster Session II section.

“I appreciate the opportunity given to me by the AVS Labs to attend DASC and help me publish my first academic paper,” said Lane. “During my time at the conference, I was able to make connections with several companies and expand my knowledge in the engineering field. Also, being a woman in STEM, I was glad to see a good ratio of women to men at DASC. I look forward to staying in connection with AIAA/IEEE members and finding new opportunities that pique my interest.”

“DASC was a revolutionary experience in how I viewed not only avionics, but also my place within the field and what I can add to it,” shared Jones. “It is an experience that I highly recommend any student or staff participate in, regardless of their particular field of expertise, because they'd be surprised at just how much they can offer.”

During the conference, space agencies from the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, shared their own research. Jones said this was as educational as the presentation.

UIW graduate student at the Digital Avionics Systems Conference “Not only did those three projects illustrate a microcosm of the overall conference, but I was afforded the opportunity to chair the session these projects were presented in,” said Jones. “I was able to gain experience about how to better integrate my knowledge as a meteorologist with their expertise to synthesize a well-developed session.”

In addition to Jones and Lane, Dr. Srikanth Vemula, principal researcher for the Computational Intelligence Lab (CIL) of the AVS Lab and professor, gave a video presentation called Instance Segmentation Graph Neural Network for Detecting Faulty Insulators Using the FLIR SkyRanger R70 UAS. Jovany Avila, a staff engineer who collaborated with graduate student Charles Beck, delivered a podium presentation titled Guidance and Navigation Controls for Drone Swarm Applications.

AVS Labs will continue researching the topics presented at DASC 2022 and plans to attend next year’s conference in Barcelona, Spain.