Awards
Funding
A Universal Framework for Control Systems Testing from Model-in-the-Loop Simulations to Flight
A. L'Afflitto
February 2025 –- January 2027
Funding agency: U.S. Department of the Navy. Cumulative: $199,999
UAV-Borne Radar Characterization of Rock Fall Hazards
J. Hole and A. L'Afflitto
July 2023 -- June 2024
Funding agency: Center to Advance the Science of Exploration to Reclamation in Mining. Cumulative: $314,149; Personal share: $33,428; 7% IDC
Constraint-Aware Fast Path Planning and Control for UAM Systems in Urban Environments
A. L'Afflitto
January 2023 -- December 2025
Funding agency: Center for Autonomous Air Mobility Sensing (NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers). Cumulative: $333,938; 7% IDC
Robust Adaptive Control and Vision-Based Navigation System Design for Multi-Rotor Aerial Vehicles
A. L'Afflitto and W. Sun
February 2023 -- February 2026
Funding agency: AvMC. Cumulative: $624,832; Personal share: $329,180
A Study on Human-Robot Interaction Design based on a Dog-Caregiver Relation
A. L'Afflitto and E. Feuerbacher
October 2023 -- June 2024
Funding agency: Virginia Tech Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science. Cumulative: $9,690
Southeast Control Conference 2021: A Networking and Brainstorming Opportunity for the Regional DCSD Community
A. L'Afflitto
August 2021 -- December 2021
Funding agency: NSF. Cumulative: $16,018
TA1: Physics-Based Robust, Adaptive, and Scalable Control Algorithms for Autonomous Ground Vehicles Operating at High-Speed in Adversarial Environments
A. L'Afflitto and C. Sandu
January 2021 -- December 2023
Funding agency: U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center. Cumulative: $394,569; Personal share: $197,285
Robust Adaptive Control Algorithms for Vertical Take-Off and Landing Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
A. L'Afflitto
January 2021 -- April 2023
Funding agency: U.S. Department of the Navy. Cumulative: $179,996
Autonomous Ground Vehicles for Safe Industrial Operations
A. L'Afflitto
September -- December 2020
Funding agency: Northrop Grumman. Cumulative: $10,000
Mentoring Program for New Faculty Members
December 2019
Funding agency: Virginia Tech (Internal grant). Cumulative: $1,500
Design of a guidance and control system for an unconventional aircraft
A. L'Afflitto
August 2019 -- July 2020
Funding agency: Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Cumulative: $44,000
Securing Autonomous Robotic Systems from Cyber-Attacks
A. L'Afflitto
September -- December 2019
Funding agency: Northrop Grumman. Cumulative: $10,000
Robust Adaptive Controls for Shipboard Landing of Multi-Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
A. L'Afflitto and D. K. Walters
June 2019 -- May 2021
Funding agency: ONR. Cumulative: $401,484; Personal share: $221,016
DARPA-RA-17-01-YFA-FP-090, TA24 - A bio-inspired approach to fly undetected in cluttered environments
A. L'Afflitto
July 2018 -- June 2021
Funding agency: DARPA Young Faculty Award. Cumulative: $498,513
T3C1S4C -- UAS Control System -- Robotics CTA 2017-18 Biennial Program Plan
A. L'Afflitto
May 2018 -- December 2020
Funding agency: ARL through Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance. Cumulative: $185,343
Collaborative Research: Unmanned Aerial Systems and Specialized Workforce Development to Support Oklahoman Agriculture and Industry
A. L'Afflitto and Z. Siddique
July 2017 -- July 2020
Funding agency: NSF ATE Program. Cumulative: $408,804; Personal share: $224,842
This proposal was in collaboration with Rose State College, whose PIs submitted the proposal no. 1700647 and received a $305,150 award.
Summer Research Experience: Programming UAS for Improved Weather Forecasts
A. L'Afflitto
May -- August 2017
Funding Agency: NSF Oklahoma EPSCoR. Cumulative: $5,000
Three-Dimensional Profiling of the Severe-Weather Environment
S. Koch, P. Chilson, E. Rasmussen, R. Huck, A. L'Afflitto, and J. Salazar-Cerreno
April 2016 -- August 2018
Funding agency: NOAA. Cumulative: $117,980; Personal share: $41,797 + fringe
Personal
- College of Engineering at Virginia Tech - 2023-2024 - Fellow
- IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems - 2021 - Outstanding contributions as an Associate Editor
- Elsevier Control Engineering Practice - 2020 - Top 15 reviewer
- The University of Oklahoma - 2018 - Exceptional Achievement in Research Award
- IET Control Theory and Applications - 2015 - Recognized by Professor J. Lam as top 5% most active and outstanding reviewer out of over 1000
- AIAA Guidance Navigation and Control Graduate Student Award - 2015 - Waived for having gained Ph.D. degree
- Maria Rea D'Onofrio Fellowship - Fall 2011 - Spring 2015
- Wolfe International Fellowship - Summer 2012
- Pratt Fellowship - January 2009
Industrial experience
Boeing, Visiting Professor Program, Summer, 2024
Collaboration on the design of advanced adaptive control systems for fixed-wing aircraft.
Air Force Research Lab, Summer Facutly Fellow, Summer, 2021
Collaboration on the design of optimization-based guidance systems for autonomous aerial systems.
Office of Naval Research, Summer Facutly Fellow, Summer, 2020
Collaboration on the design of nonlinear robust control algorithms for small, autonomous vertial take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicles.
Army Research Lab, Summer Facutly Fellow, Summer, 2017-2019
Collaboration on the design, implementation, and testing of nonlinear robust controls for multi-rotor aircraft and aerial manipulators.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Mathematician, July - August, 2013
Analysis of the instabilities of electron beams and design of optimal state-feedback control laws that guarantee minimization of the beam emittance and convergence of the beams to an assigned manifold.
German Aerospace Agency (DLR), Systems and operations engineer, January, 2009 - May, 2008
Payload and operations coordinator of EXPOSE-E, a payload installed in February 2008 outside the European module Columbus of the ISS. This payload was aimed at studying of the effects of solar radiations on biological samples. Main tasks concerned defining procedures for utilizing EXPOSE-E, supporting the payload utilization in orbit, coordinating the real-time science objectives of the payload facility, issuing commands to the payload, and coordinating the work of the product developer, the primary investigators, and the other USOCs involved.
Italian Space Agency (ASI), Systems engineer, January - June, 2006
I contributed to the design in phase 0 of a satellite for Earth observation according to the concurrent design methodology and selected its most adequate orbit. This satellite was designed to fly in formation with a spacecraft of the Argentinian Space Agency (CONAE) to acquire interferometric images using an L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). I also contributed to design the structure of the database supporting the concurrent engineering facility at ASI.
Co.Ro.S.T.A. (Consortium of Research of Advanced Remote Sensing Systems) - Alenia Spazio, Systems engineer, January - July, 2004
My tasks concerned the design of a vision system (stereo cameras and laser scanner) for a satellite of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), which is aimed at autonomous robotic on orbit rendezvous, docking, and servicing. The main contractor for this project was ALENIA Spazio.