Skip to main content Skip to secondary navigation
Main content start
Firepower Enhancement Program Director

John Alsterda

Firepower Enhancement Program Director

State of the art automated vehicles can safely navigate planned paths which do not exceed limitations imposed by friction and other physical properties. Planning trustworthy paths, however, is challenging when precise limitations are unknown. Emergency maneuvers are especially likely to require an automated vehicle to use the limits of friction to escape an accident.

My research focuses on contingency planning for situations when limit behavior is desired, but those limits are also unknown. To accomplish this, I employ a model predictive control framework which considers several potential paths simultaneously.

Publications

Contingency Model Predictive Control for Automated Vehicles

Education

MS Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, 2017
BS Physics, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, 2011