AeroAstro Research Labs

The Aerospace Computational Design Laboratory’s mission is the advancement and application of computational engineering for the design, optimization, and control of aerospace and other complex systems. ACDL research addresses a comprehensive range of topics, including advanced computational fluid dynamics and mechanics, uncertainty quantification, data assimilation and statistical inference, surrogate and reduced modeling, and simulation-based design techniques.

The Communications and Networking Research Group's primary goal is the design of network architectures that are cost effective, scalable, and meet emerging needs for high data-rate and reliable communications. To meet emerging critical needs for military communications, space exploration, and internet access for remote and mobile users, future aerospace networks will depend upon satellite, wireless and optical components. Satellite networks are essential for providing access to remote locations lacking in communications infrastructure; wireless networks are needed for communication between untethered nodes, such as autonomous air vehicles; and optical networks are critical to the network backbone and in high performance local area networks.

The MIT Gas Turbine Laboratory has had a worldwide reputation for research and teaching at the forefront of gas turbine technology for more than 60 years. GTL’s mission is to advance the state-of-the-art in fluid machinery for power and propulsion. The research is focused on advanced propulsion systems, energy conversion and power, with activities in computational, theoretical, and experimental study of: loss mechanisms and unsteady flows in fluid machinery; dynamic behavior and stability of compression systems; instrumentation and diagnostics; advanced centrifugal compressors and pumps for energy conversion; gas turbine engine and fluid machinery noise reduction and aero-acoustics; novel aircraft and propulsion system concepts for reduced environmental impact. Several experimental facilities include: a unique swirling flow test rig for centrifugal compressor diffuser analysis, a 15,000 SCFM continuous supersonic wind tunnel and air supply, a single-stage low-speed research compressor, a 500kW helicopter gas turbine engine test cell, a shock tube for reacting flow heat transfer analysis, and a range of one-of-a-kind experimental flow diagnostics. GTL also has unique computational and theoretical modeling capabilities in the areas of gas turbine fluid mechanics, turbomachinery, and aero-acoustics.

The Interactive Robotics Lab conducts research and develops technology to ease the integration of robotics and autonomous systems into human-centered work environments. This includes the design of algorithms for planning, decision-making, and control of autonomous systems that are modified to support safe, efficient and natural interaction with people. Research applications focuses on high-intensity and safety-critical applications including aerospace manufacturing, disaster response, and space operations.

The Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment works to understand and quantify the environmental impacts of aviation and related sectors such as transportation and energy. LAE researchers apply their methods to quantify the costs and benefits of operational, regulatory, and technological strategies for reducing the environmental impacts of aviation.

The team is focused on the following fields:

• Modeling aviation's past, present, and future climate impacts. The team develops and employs both reduced-order climate modeling tools for technology and policy assessment, and detailed physical models for quantifying the atmospheric impacts of aviation emissions, including contrails and other cloudiness effects that have climate impacts comparable in magnitude to accumulated CO2 emissions from aviation.
• Improving our understanding of how aviation has, does, and will impact air quality at the local and global scales. This research spans scales from local questions of dispersion around airports, to the problems of intercontinental pollution plumes and the effects of cruise altitude emissions on ground-level pollution.
• Quantifying the environmental impact and economic feasibility of alternative aviation fuels, including biomass and waste-derived fuels. The methods of life cycle and techno-economic assessment (LCA and TEA, respectively) are applied to evaluate conventional and emerging fuel production technologies and inform policy decisions.
• Developing and evaluating novel technologies that help mitigate aviation's environmental impacts. Team members are working on technologies such as emissions control devices for gas turbines, the viability of electric aircraft for reducing environmental impacts of aviation, and electroaerodynamic (EAD) thrusters for solid-state propulsion.

The Man Vehicle Laboratory optimizes human-vehicle system safety and effectiveness by improving understanding of human physiological and cognitive capabilities, and developing appropriate countermeasures and evidence-based engineering design criteria. Research is interdisciplinary, and uses techniques from manual and supervisory control, signal processing, estimation, sensory-motor physiology, sensory and cognitive psychology, biomechanics, human factor engineering, artificial intelligence, and biostatistics. MVL has flown experiments on Space Shuttle Spacelab missions and parabolic flights, and has several flight experiments in development for the International Space Station. NASA, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, and the FAA sponsor ground-based research. Projects focus on advanced space suit design and dynamics of astronaut motion, adaptation to rotating artificial gravity environments, spatial disorientation and navigation, teleoperation, design of aircraft and spacecraft displays and controls and cockpit human factors. Annual MVL MIT Independent Activities Period activities include ski safety research, and an introductory course on Boeing 767 systems and automation. MVL faculty also teach subjects in human factors engineering, space systems engineering, space policy, flight simulation, space physiology, aerospace biomedical and life support engineering, and the physiology of human spatial orientation.

Our research goals are to build unmanned vehicles that can fly without GPS through unmapped indoor environments, robots that can drive through unmapped cities, and to build social robots that can quickly learn what people want without being annoying or intrusive. Such robots must be able to perform effectively with uncertain and limited knowledge of the world, be easily deployed in new environments and immediately start autonomous operations with no prior information.

The Space Systems Laboratory engages in cutting-edge research projects with the goal of directly contributing to the current and future exploration and development of space. SSL's mission is to explore innovative concepts for the integration of future space systems and to train a generation of researchers and engineers conversant in this field. Specific tasks include developing the technology and systems analysis associated with small spacecraft, precision optical systems, and International Space Station technology research and development. The laboratory encompasses expertise in structural dynamics, control, thermal, space power, propulsion, microelectromechanical systems, software development and systems. Major activities in this laboratory are the development of small spacecraft thruster systems (see the Space Propulsion Laboratory) and researching issues associated with the distribution of function among satellites. In addition, technology is being developed for spaceflight validation in support of a new class of space-based telescopes that exploit the physics of interferometry to achieve dramatic breakthroughs in angular resolution.

The SPARK (Sensing, Perception, Autonomy, and Robot Kinetics) Lab, directed by Professor Luca Carlone, works at the bleeding edge of robotics and autonomous systems research for air, space, and ground applications. The lab develops the algorithmic foundations of robotics through the innovative design, rigorous analysis, and real-world testing of algorithms for single and multi-robot systems. A major goal of the lab is to enable human-level perception, world understanding, and navigation on mobile platforms (micro aerial vehicles, self-driving vehicles, ground robots, augmented reality). Core areas of expertise include nonlinear estimation, numerical and distributed optimization, probabilistic inference, graph theory, and computer vision.

The System Architecture Lab studies the early-stage technical decisions that will determine the majority of the system's performance. SAL has helped architect systems from earth observation networks, to lunar surface exploration vehicles. The lab’s key contention is that by identifying the most important initial technical decisions and exhaustively enumerating their options, the best potential designs are identified prior to the detailed design activities. SAL work stands in contrast to a traditional trade-study perspective, where two to four points designs are compared, without reference to the intervening options or to a fully explored tradespace. The emerging field of System Architecture aims to understand what patterns emerge across disparate domains, to gain an understanding of the making of good architecture.  System architecture models look broadly across possible technologies, subsystems, and use contexts. Although each model employs problem-specific parametrics, SAL has advanced the state of the art by developing unique and generalizable approach to structuring complex systems architecting problems that can be applied across disciplines.

The Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative (SEAri) advances the theories, methods, and effective practice of systems engineering applied to complex socio-technical systems through collaborative research. Four key areas of research are: 1) Socio-Technical Decision Making, which seeks to develop multi-disciplinary representations, analysis methods, and techniques for improving decision making for socio-technical systems; 2) Designing for Value Robustness, which seeks to develop methods for concept exploration, architecting and design using a dynamic perspective for the purpose of realizing systems, products, and services that deliver sustained value to stakeholders in a changing world; 3) Systems Engineering Economics, which seeks to develop an economics view of systems engineering to achieve measurable and predictable outcomes while delivering value to stakeholders; 4) Systems Engineering in the Enterprise, which involves empirical studies and case-based research for the purpose of understanding how to achieve more effective systems engineering practice taking into account the nature of the system being developed, external context, and the characteristics of the associated enterprise.

The research group has a strong foundation in the aerospace system design and architecture domain, with more recent work branching into the transportation and infrastructure systems domains. While these domains represent past work and ongoing areas for case study analysis, the methods and practices developed by SEAri aim for cross-domain applicability.