robotics and autonomous systems

Blimps filled the EagleBank Arena air at the Lighter Than Air (LTA) Defend the Republic competition in April. The winning Mason team, led by principal investigators Cameron Nowzari, Ningshi Yao, and Daigo Shishika, competed against six universities and about 50 LTA "blimps."

Missy Cummings, one of the country’s first female fighter pilots and the director of Mason’s autonomy and robotics center, calls herself a tech futurist, charged with making tech work and helping it get better. She isn’t shy about calling out bad tech either, including the vision systems in self-driving cars and Tesla’s Autopilot.

Research Interests: Human-robot interactions, human-robot co-learning, bio-inspired robotics, distributed resource allocation

Research Interests: Multi-robot systems, multi-agent games

A trailblazer in naval engineering research and engineering education, Leigh McCue combines curiosity, storytelling, and teaching that fosters a diverse environment for women and minorities in STEM.

Research Interests: Multi-robot systems, swarm robots, bio-inspired robots, distributed resource allocation