At the 2019 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, the Secretary’s Student RAISE Award was given to Penn Engineering senior design team members John Kearney, Max Li, William Tam and Sahithya Prakash. The team advisor was Megan S. Ryerson, who has appointments in the department of city and regional planning in PennDesign and the SEAS department of electrical & systems engineering.

The Secretary’s RAISE award recognizes innovative scientific and engineering concepts and student achievements that have the potential to significantly impact the future of aerospace or aviation. The selection was made by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The team focused on the design and implementation of a centralized air traffic control (ATC) system for autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (aUAVs) to mitigate the risk of aUAV-on-aUAV mid-air collisions. The team was motivated by the potential benefits derived from using aUAVs within an urban environment for tasks like package delivery and search-and-rescue. The team’s solution identifies aUAV trajectory conflicts in real-time and transmits conflict resolution protocols to the appropriate aUAVs.