Team “Autonomous Navigation Systems” won first place in their major at the Engineering Project Showcase. (From left) Luis Albos, Santhosh Chendil, Jack Josephson and Sean Chen.
Maintaining resilient coordination among multiple robots in chaotic environments is a fundamental challenge and key source of system vulnerability in today’s world.
Solving this problem is at the heart of ongoing research by Dr. Eman Hammad, assistant professor in Texas A&M University’s electronic systems engineering technology program. She is the director of the Innovations in Systems Trust and Resilience (iSTAR) Lab, which focuses on cyber-physical systems, distributed intelligence, communication and resilience.
The work aligns closely with that of Dr. Jaewon Kim, research scientist at the Texas A&M Global Cyber Research Institute (GCRI). Hammad and Kim have formed a research partnership that has resulted not only in important advancements in this critical area of robotics, but also the opportunity to provide invaluable experience to students in the engineering technology and industrial distribution department.
Hammad and Kim recently mentored mechatronics students Luis Albos, Sean Chen, Santhosh Chendil and Jack Josephson, who joined the faculty-led research effort for their senior capstone project. The students contributed to the broader challenge of developing robotic systems that remain trustworthy and functional, even when operating conditions are not ideal.
Hammad and Kim set the overall research framework and provided technical guidance. In turn, the students helped implement and validate a multi-robot system that allows TurtleBot3 robots to autonomously survey while maintaining navigation, coordination and mission progress as they adapt their behavior in response to different conditions. This resilient autonomy is crucial. Without it, the robots can lose coordination, duplicate tasks and fail to share critical information needed for success.
Luis Albos works on a TurtleBot3 robot.
The platform is applicable to critical missions like search and rescue, defense and security operations, disaster response, hazardous inspections and remote explorations. Representative use cases include autonomous reconnaissance in disaster zones where communication infrastructure has been compromised, coordinated operations in environments subject to active jamming or signal interference, emergency response following weather events, inspections of industrial, chemical or post-incident sites where human entry is unsafe, and exploration of subterranean, underwater or extraterrestrial environments where conventional communication links are unreliable.
In each scenario, the ability of robots to coordinate autonomously despite degraded or contested perception of the environment is essential. The system perception layer uses light detection and ranging, cameras, ultrasonic sensors and onboard processing to explore an environment, detect obstacles and report pose, map and status data to a central mission-control center. Under stable conditions, the center coordinates shared mapping, assigns frontier goals and sends local goal poses back to each robot. When adversarial conditions such as communication interference is detected, the robot shifts into a more cautious navigation mode to reduce localization errors and maintain safe operation.
Hammad, Kim and the students successfully addressed the critical issue of how to keep networks of autonomous agents running smoothly and demonstrated how resilient autonomy bridges robotics, cybersecurity and real-world system reliability.
“Building a multi-agent autonomous robotic platform for critical missions is a complex project which the students tackled with excellence,” Hammad said. “Over the course of a year, they developed a deep understanding of complex challenges combining embedded systems, sensor fusion, control and mechanical design, communication, real-time multi-agent coordination, AI-driven perception, localization and multi-level integration.”
The students’ dedication to the project was exemplary, according to Kim.
“They were at the GCRI lab every single day, researching, testing and refining their system,” he said. “This effort led to remarkable technical maturity. Their ability to bridge the gap between theoretical research and practical implementation is inspiring.”
Through the capstone process, the students gained insights into real-world engineering and learned numerous applicable lessons, including the importance of patience and resilience to overcome obstacles.
“There were many moments when we felt stuck and frustrated, unsure if our project would
go anywhere. But we kept showing up and putting in the work,” said Chen, the team’s hardware engineer. “This experience taught me that progress is rarely apparent in the moment. In the end, watching it all come together and function as one piece was incredibly rewarding.”
(From left) Jack Josephson, Dr. Jaewon Kim, Luis Albos, Sean Chen, Dr. Eman Hammad and Santhosh Chendil.
Chendil, the team’s software engineer, learned that engineering isn’t just about elegant solutions.
“It’s about creative workarounds, extreme patience and being willing to fail a thousand times just for that one moment everything finally works out,” he said. “To me, that’s the core of engineering.”
The group unveiled their work at Texas A&M’s College of Engineering Project Showcase and took first place in their major. Presenting the project to industry experts who served as judges was an important part of the learning process for the student engineers.
“The judges told us that the questions we were asking during our design process are the same types of questions they ask in industry, just at a much larger scale,” said Albos, the project manager. “That feedback made the project feel especially valuable because it showed that our work was not only academic, but connected to actual engineering challenges.”
Hammad and Kim are pleased that this endeavor provided the students with real-life experiences that helped them build a strong foundation for professional careers. The pair will continue their research and look forward to including more student engineers in future projects.
