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Alan Jennings
PhD Candidate at University of Dayton, Graduating 2012
Research Assistant at the Air Force Institute of Technology |
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Alan Jennings
PhD Candidate at University of Dayton, Graduating 2012
Research Assistant at the Air Force Institute of Technology |
Currently I research function optimization with a focus on control and hope better designs will enhance everyday life. Ultimately, I’d like to research and teach engineering. Being a professor would be rewarding because I enjoy research and teaching and would be good at it. Research requires the ability to look at problems in a new light. Teaching is based about providing the students with challenges that are designed to develop their skills. A primary role of the teacher is to encourage and coach them along their path. After I graduate with a doctoral degree, I anticipate working in research for a corporation or a national lab. Some of the projects I would personally enjoy are:
Robotic Assisted Motion, robots coupled to humans to provide needed power. This concept has been around for ages where a person dons a robotic suit for super-human strength. A more practical application is for the many disabled people with some strength (the power has to come from somewhere which is a challenge they face). Some existing systems have been built from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon/Sarcos and Honda.
Robotic learning, how to give a robot the framework so it can be taught as we teach children. If we want robots to learn as people do, they should have the foundation that we give to our infants. Here’s a example from Iowa with this philosophy. We can teach robots what we know, but for things we don't understand well (three legged motion or three fingered grasping or asteroid surface locomotion); the designers prejudices will infect the design, possible resulting in fundamental limitation and poor performance. Rather than trying to get robots to move like humans, we should discover how motions with motors work best.
Exploratory Swarms, having a lot of simple agents that interact to quickly survey large expanses (one example here). Rather than one or two robots that traverse slowly and deliberately, hundreds of drones can fan out and quickly determine favorable directions and gather a wealth of data. With low-level autonomous control, a human could orchestrate them as many `Warcraft’ like game are done today. A MIT/iRobot collaborative paper is here.
Education empowers an engineer to design and analyze real-world problems. I desire knowledge to solve problems that interest me and will improve society. More important than knowledge, though is thinking. I developed reasoning during undergraduate studies with understanding of kinematics, strength, geometry and more. Graduate studies taught advanced tools I need including nonlinear analysis and design, adaptive control, optimum control and practical control implementation.
University of Akron taught me to apply fundamental principles to structures, motion, and thermal/ fluid systems with course work, projects, labs and co-op. Participating in the SAE Aero design challenge gave me practical experience and leadership training (Team Captain). I have over a year work experience at ERICO (maker of Caddy clips and LENTON rebar couplers). With a NSF grant at Western Michigan University I was able to exploring pneumatic response and research new directions with potential automation applications. Engineering needs more than just equations, but understanding the fundamentals involved. My background covers theory and practice.
I now attend University of Dayton studying controls with Dr. Raúl Ordóñez supported by an Ohio Space Grant Consortium Fellowship. I have experience publishing research and a broad grasp of control principles. My thesis on optimizing UAV path planning in wind investigated the discontinuities that way points (assigned location on a path) can have on optimization. This requires an understanding of how to deal with a non-linear, non-homogenous environment. The optimal solution is combinatorially infeasible, but I suggested a set of heuristics that can quickly (<1sec) provide near optimal paths.
While I'm been working at the Air Force Institute of Technology, my job have been to figure out what is needed and get it working. My supervisor, Dr. Jonathan Black is investigating how ornithopter's wings billow to produce more lift and how to predict space boom deployments. Due to the low mass involved, sensors would significantly change the response; even the weight of paint is sometimes too much. I've worked with coordinating real-time position data from a Vicon system, data collection from a vibrometer, mirror steering for the laser, gimbal steering and lens control using RS-232 for a 500fps, 1.3MP camera, and a 4lb (18N) six degree of freedom force balance using MATLAB/Simulink, LabVIEW and other 3rd party software. This system has allowed us to perform dense surface reconstructions as the membrane follows its natural motion. If you have questions for someone that's used any of these systems, please just ask.
I am an Ohio boy; raised in the East suburbs of Cleveland, I went down to Akron and got married there and now live near Wright-Patterson Air Force base. The longest time I spent away from Ohio was for a two-year religious mission in Utah for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS\Mormon). Too bad that Dayton doesn't get the good ole storms of the snow belt. Each year it's still a mystery why people would want to see grass in January?
In my personal life, I have been married for 7 years to Karen. My first baby was born a few years ago, Nicole; and now she has a younger sister! She's always getting older and has started preschool. You can see some old videos with her singing on YouTube under alanjenningsohio and here’s a full page with pictures of her.
For recreation I enjoy reading, running or playing with my R/C car, airplane or helicopters. I enjoy almost all sports, but a loose shoulder prefers low contact sports, especially biking now. I achieved a personal milestone by completing the USAF marathon last summer. Now I can really say that marathons are just dumb ideas. Athletes are encourages to take performance enhancing drugs (Ibuprofen) and waste a good chunk of their life ending up just back where they started. I'm almost embarrassed to say it did it, because it just shows how easily I can be challenged into a pointless struggle.
