Research Review with Dengfeng Sun, Ph.D.

Research Review with Dengfeng, Ph.D.

Banner for CCAT Research Review with Dengfeng Sun. It features their headshot and job title. The link directs to the VOD of the presentation on YouTube.

Speaker(s): Dengfeng Sun, Ph.D., Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University

Presentation Title: A Mixed Integer Linear Programming Model for Ride-sharing with Advanced Air Mobility

Research: Ride-sharing with Advanced Air Mobility

Date/Time: Wednesday, March 8th, 2023 | 1:00 PM ET

Continuing Education Units (CEU): .1*
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Abstract: In this talk, Professor Dengfeng Sun will present some research outcomes from the project, “Ride-sharing with Advanced Air Mobility.” In this project, researchers from Purdue University developed a comprehensive and efficient mixed integer linear programming model for the autonomous aerial ridesharing service. They used one unified model to simultaneously solve two problems:

  1. the optimal assignment problem between the air taxis and the users
  2. the optimal path planning problem of the air taxis.

The model aims to minimize the waiting time of the users, the operation cost of the air taxis, the number of unserved ride-sharing requests, and the completion time of received requests. They will present challenges encountered during the project and share some computational results from the model. While autonomous vehicles (AVs) promise a transportation future with several benefits, a high incidence of motion sickness among passengers remains a major impediment to the widespread adoption of this promising technology.

Speaker Bio:
Dengfeng Sun is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Before joining Purdue, he was an Associate Scientist with the University of California Santa Cruz at NASA Ames Research Center. He received a bachelor’s degree in precision instruments and mechanology from Tsinghua University in China, a master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from the Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. degree in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Sun’s research interests include distributed control and optimization: theory, algorithms, and computation; cyber-physical systems; unmanned aerial vehicle systems; air traffic control and air transportation; intelligent transportation systems.

Dr. Sun is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and a Senior Member of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Currently, he is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. Dr. Sun is a Co-Director of NEXTOR III, the FAA Consortium in Aviation Operations Research, and serves on the Technical Committee on Guidance, Navigation, and Control in the AIAA. He is the faculty advisor of Sigma Gamma Tau, the national honor society for Aerospace Engineering. Dr. Sun is a Private Pilot and a Drone Pilot. He was the faculty advisor of PPI (Purdue Pilots, Inc.) from 2012 to 2021.