{"689555":{"#nid":"689555","#data":{"type":"event","title":"PhD Defense by Christian Llanes","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETitle: \u003C\/strong\u003EReinforcement Learning-Based Control and Safety Verification for Aerial Robotics\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDate: \u003C\/strong\u003EWednesday, April 15th, 2026\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETime: \u003C\/strong\u003E10:00 AM - 12:00 PM ET\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ELocation: \u003C\/strong\u003ETSRB 523a\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EVirtual Link:\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/teams.microsoft.com\/meet\/238620699085923?p=4zgiZl6IqYJrmBv4Bu\u0022\u003EMicrosoft Teams\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EChristian Llanes\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERobotics PhD Candidate\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESchool of Electrical and Computer Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchristianllanes.com%2F\u0026amp;data=05%7C02%7Ctm186%40gtvault.onmicrosoft.com%7C953f172a06fa4e22b94a08de94e8999e%7C482198bbae7b4b258b7a6d7f32faa083%7C1%7C0%7C639111923913387659%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C\u0026amp;sdata=LVw2Zv3UKq498JfW8yeCQo4nmAx6wcpFJHsAHXLyEW8%3D\u0026amp;reserved=0\u0022\u003Ehttps:\/\/christianllanes.com\/\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECommittee:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr. Samuel Coogan (Advisor) - School of Electrical and Computer Engineering \u0026amp; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr. Kyriakos G. Vamvoudakis\u0026nbsp;- School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr. Panagiotis Tsiotras\u0026nbsp;- School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute\u0026nbsp;of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr. Sehoon Ha - School of Iterative Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr. Glen Chou - School of Cybersecurity and Privacy \u0026amp; School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAbstract:\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELearning-based techniques have become increasingly popular as a tool for improving autonomy of aerial robotics platforms. However, these methods typically lack safety guarantees using formal verification. We contribute to autonomy for aerial robotics by using learning-based techniques and a safe verification method for supervising unverified controllers. Specifically, we propose a navigation framework for urban air mobility and aerial robotics that leverages actor-critic model predictive control \u0026nbsp;for urban air mobility, and using reachability with control barrier functions for verifying these learning-based methods. We leverage mixed monotonicity to quickly overapproximate reachable sets for aerial drone dynamics in real-time. Additionally, we explore multi-agent reinforcement learning to train drone swarms to cooperate in a multi-agent pursuit evasion problem. We also extend actor-critic model\u0026nbsp; predictive control to multi-agent reinforcement learning with a demonstration of improved robustness over standard multi-layer perceptron policies. Finally, we contribute software tools for the aerial robotics community for simulating hardware code for the Crazyflie nano quadrotor.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EReinforcement Learning-Based Control and Safety Verification for Aerial Robotics\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Reinforcement Learning-Based Control and Safety Verification for Aerial Robotics"}],"uid":"27707","created_gmt":"2026-04-07 21:04:28","changed_gmt":"2026-04-07 21:04:57","author":"Tatianna Richardson","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2026-04-15T10:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2026-04-15T12:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2026-04-15T12:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2026-04-15 14:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2026-04-15 16:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2026-04-15 16:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"location":"TSRB 523a","extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"221981","name":"Graduate Studies"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"100811","name":"Phd Defense"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1788","name":"Other\/Miscellaneous"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78771","name":"Public"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}