Edwin holds a school diploma in Ecuador, a bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering in Mexico and a master's degree in Robotics and Automation in Pisa. His interest in distributed systems and artificial intelligence prompted him to apply for the PhD tender offered by Leonardo, attracted not only by the technical aspects of the project but also by the opportunity to grasp an industrial point of view.

The team has so far focused a lot on simulating the system and is facing the challenge of making a state-of-the-art drone that maps an unknown environment and plans mission’s movements.

PhD OBJECTIVES:

• Develop an intelligent platform capable of recognizing the environment and the risks on it, to decide a strategy to carry out its mission against errors. In order to determine a path that guarantees the safety of the vehicle, planning must resolve an optimization problem regarding not only external circumstances but to consider internal features as well like energy, weight, speed, sensor resolution.

SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVES:

• Research technologies to improve accuracy and precision of UAVs mapping, positioning and motion. Mainly in unreliable and degraded situations where global navigation methods and external communication are limited, relying only into onboard computed decisions based on local information for motion planning and collision detection.