Congratulations to Team SunLab for winning
the NSF AERPAW “Find a Rover” Challenge!
This past spring 2024, awards were presented to the top three teams in two categories, judged on how accurately they would estimate a position after three minutes and again after ten minutes. The final ranking for each category was based on the lowest average distance error over three rover locations. Team SunLab placed 3rd in the fast three-minute category and 2nd in the ten-minute category. The prizes were $750 for a 3rd place finish and $1250 for a second-place finish.
Paul Kudyba participated in the challenge as a graduate student in Dr. Haijian Sun’s lab. Paul recently earned his Master’s in Engineering with an Emphasis on Electrical and Computer Engineering this past spring 2024 from UGA, and is continuing research work in the Sun Lab. We interviewed Paul to learn more about the NSF AERPAW Find a Rover Challenge. Here’s what Paul shared with us in ECE:
Name
Paul S. Kudyba, III
Hometown
Doraville, GA
Degrees
M.S. in Engineering with an Emphasis on Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Georgia ’24
B.S. in Computer Engineering Technology from Southern Polytechnic State University, now Kennesaw State. Transferred from University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Tell us more about your current research work.
I am part of Dr. Sun’s wireless communications laboratory team, where we explore solutions to various challenges in radio communication. My research examines wireless communication applications in robotics and vehicles. Recently, I was involved in a challenging competition using NC State’s AERPAW program to study wireless communications in conjunction with aerial drone autonomy.
What is the NSF AERPAW “Find a Rover” Challenge!
The AERPAW program is National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research at NC State to study aerial drone autonomy combined with wireless communications, like 5G. Fortunately, I attended a workshop at NC State, where the AERPAW platform and many real-world engineering challenges in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) autonomy were presented. The AERPAW “Find a Rover” challenge was also issued at the workshop.
What did you need to do for the challenge?
The goal was to quickly estimate the location of a hidden ground rover using only the specific narrowband radio signal the rover emitted. The challenge was to write a program to safely navigate the aerial drone while autonomously finding the missing rover in a haystack of approximately twenty acres in under three and ten minutes.
How long did it take you to develop/build your entry for the challenge?
During the summer after the workshop, I dedicated significant time to researching potential solutions and conducted smaller simulations to test and validate my ideas. Two months before the November deadline, I coded various functions, breaking them down to test them as subsystems. In the final month, my focus shifted to integrating these ideas and code into a cohesive final submission and, of course, debugging. To ensure everything was bug-free, I utilized the AERPAW simulator as a digital twin, ironing out any issues in my code in preparation for the actual flight.
What award did you win? What was the prize?
Awards were presented to the top three teams in two categories, judged on how accurately they could estimate a position after three minutes and again after ten minutes. The final ranking for each category was based on the lowest average distance error over three rover locations. Team Sun Lab placed 3rd in the fast three-minute category and 2nd in the ten-minute category. The prizes were $750 for a 3rd place finish and $1250 for a second-place finish.
Did you travel for this challenge, or was this a virtual entry?
The code entry was entirely virtual, but the final test was a real autonomous arial drone performing the search. Before the drone flight, all submissions went through a simulator, which checked our program’s flight behavior to ensure the drone program remained within a safe operating envelope. I would have loved to see the drone flight personally, but unfortunately, participant viewing was not allowed.
Let me know anything else you can think of to share about this challenge.
This was the first of hopefully many AERPAW competitions, and I hope that UGA can continue to participate in some of the future events. So, if you are interested in robotic research along with radio communications and want a challenge, keep your eye on this space!
And more about you…
Why did you choose UGA?
UGA inspired my choice with excellent interdisciplinary engineering opportunities and a strong tradition of positive community outreach. I became interested in UGA’s engineering graduate program through an internship with the Center for Tropical & Emerging Global Diseases (CTEGD), where I built prototype low-cost laboratory equipment based on 3D printer components. This experience fostered my ambition to further my education.
When did you become interested in engineering?
I have always loved building and tinkering, from working on my car to building computers and 3D printers. Still, I only knew I wanted to become a computer engineer once I started programming as an undergraduate.
What are your plans after earning your degree?
I plan to continue building solutions and bringing orthogonal and interdisciplinary approaches to today’s problems. I would love to continue working in a laboratory with similar cross-field collaborations and challenges
What study hacks have you discovered that you would recommend to a new student in engineering?
I love learning different approaches to the nexus of an idea or concept. Nowadays, many ways exist to describe a concept or idea and validate a solution. Keeping myself engaged in this way is the most impactful study hack I’ve discovered. Not understanding a concept or idea indicates that I need to invest more in tailoring my engagement toward learning from a new perspective. With this approach, it then becomes hard to NOT study!
How do you stay informed with current and upcoming technology?
For general tech updates, I listen to way too many podcasts. It is a great podcast when it cites a source, a paper, or a book I can follow up with.
What do you find most enjoyable about engineering?
Like many engineers, I love building things and seeing them work, light up, or move for the first time. Moreover, I like seeing the careful engineering that allowed me to combine such complex systems. It adds to my accomplishment in automating something new and appreciating the combination of ideas from which it was born. This part of engineering brings me a ton of joy.
What procedures and safeguards do you use to prevent mistakes?
We all learn from our mistakes. And that’s precisely how we discover new ways to maintain stable systems. Thankfully, we can avoid repeating other engineers’ mistakes by learning from their experiences and tests. That’s why I am always extra careful to check for out-of-bounds issues when creating a critically safe design or algorithm. My responsibility as an engineer is to ensure that the system can safely handle all kinds of data – good, bad, or none. How a system responds to invalid or wrong input makes all the difference between a mistake and a safeguard.
What positive difference in the world do you hope to make through engineering?
I want to bring forth innovative system designs that reinvent the world, addressing the values and struggles of our time. I also want to inspire future engineers to leverage the world’s limitless possibilities to improve everyone’s quality of life.
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