Dr. John-Paul Clarke

Professor

University of Texas at Austin

Abstract:

In the most prevalent visions for the future of air transportation, highly automated/autonomous aircraft will transport passengers and cargo from door to door via a dynamically generated, multi-scale, hybrid (point-to-point plus hub-and-spoke) network. This vision will also require greater air traffic management (ATM) system autonomy and new certification standards for vehicles, systems, and operators. In this presentation I will discuss how these challenges may be addressed by ongoing and proposed work on autonomous decision-making. Specifically, based on an alternative definition for autonomy where autonomous decision-making and autonomous operations are distinct, I will show how autonomous decision-making may be decomposed in prescribed input-output relationships (i.e., state-action mappings) and stochastic programs, and present the application of this new paradigm to two critical tasks that are currently primarily performed by humans, i.e., aircraft trajectory planning to maximize both mission success and survivability; and the decision whether to abort an approach and landing. Finally, I will propose a framework for the certification of vehicles that must both operate and make decisions autonomously.

Bio

John-Paul Clarke is a professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Memorial Chair in Engineering. Previously, he was a faculty member at Georgia Tech and MIT, Vice President of Strategic Technologies at United (now Raytheon) Technologies, and a researcher at Boeing and NASA JPL. He has also co-founded multiple companies, most recently Universal Hydrogen – a company dedicated to the development of a comprehensive carbon-free solution for aviation. Dr. Clarke is a leading expert in aircraft trajectory prediction and optimization, especially as it pertains to reducing the environmental impact of aviation, and in the development and use of stochastic models and optimization algorithms to improve the efficiency and robustness of aircraft, airline, airport, and air traffic operations. He was the founding chair of the AIAA Human-Machine Teaming Technical Committee and was co-chair of the National Academies Committee that developed the US National Agenda for Autonomy Research related to Civil Aviation. Dr. Clarke received S.B. (1991), S.M. (1992), and Sc.D. (1997) degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. He is a Fellow of the AIAA and the RAeS, and is a member of AGIFORS, INFORMS, and Sigma Xi.

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