College of

Engineering, Architecture and Technology

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) awarded Dr. Juan S. Borrero, an assistant professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and Management, a grant of $420,000.

 

AFOSR funds research within the Air Force Research Laboratory to continue developing technology that meets the United States Air Force’s needs. Funding opportunities are solicited through broad agency announcements, educational programs, special programs and university research initiative programs.

 

Dr. Borrero’s research is titled “Exact Optimization Approaches for Surveillance and Defense Operations with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles under Uncertainty.” The overall goal of the project is to provide a mathematical and algorithmic framework to model and optimally solve routing and re-routing problems for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations with UAVs under uncertain adversarial disruptions.

 

The proposed framework will be based on mixed-integer programming. It will provide parsimonious formulations that will be solved by integrating column and constraint generation decomposition algorithms with decision diagrams-based techniques. The methods will allow planners to find optimal routing plans for a fleet composed of UAVs and ground vehicles while also allowing them to optimally re-route the fleet if it is necessary to react to uncertain adversarial disruptions.

 

Dr. Borrero’s collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory could result in prototyping his developments in real-world scenarios involving the Air Force.