Steven Quintero Email & Phone Number

Oxnard, Ca, Us

Arlington, Virginia, Us

Arlington, Virginia, Us

Arlington, Virginia, Us

Arlington, Virginia, Us

Santa Barbara, Ca, Us

Studied the problem of using multiple continuously rotating quadcopters equipped with directional antennas to perform localization and tracking of a moving radio frequency (RF) source. Employed a particle filter that utilizes a motion model inspired by the tumble and run behavior of bacteria and also directly incorporates the directional received signal strength (RSS) measurements of the radio signal emitted by the RF source, which is made possible by learning the RSS measurement likelihood function offline. Wrote Python scripts and assembled quadcopters to perform live flight experiments that verify the efficacy of the proposed approach, which achieves an average position estimation error on par with that of commodity GPS receivers.

Santa Barbara, Ca, Us

Studied the problem of visually tracking and estimating the position of a randomly moving ground target with a small, fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) equipped with a gimbaled camera. Used probabilistic planning techniques to generate control policies that are robust to unpredictable target motion and unmodeled system dynamics while enabling the following autonomous flight behaviors: 1. One UAV with a limited sensing region to maintain visibility and proximity to the ground target 2. Multiple UAVs to flock together in order to distribute the sensing task amongst group members 3. Two UAVs to optimally coordinate in order to gather the best joint vision-based measurements of the ground target’s position.Derived a policy generation technique along with an essential robust regression scheme to circumvent the computational challenges associated with the dynamic programming solution to the stochastic optimal coordination of two UAVs, which is a moderate dimensional Markov Decision Process. Validated control policies through either Monte Carlo simulations or live flight experiments.

Implemented a system to monitor and characterize the current draw behavior of model aircraft servos aboard a small rotary-winged UAV in order to verify the structural integrity of the aircraft servos and linkages. Designed a circuit board that monitors the current draw using sense resistors in conjunction with an embedded microprocessor.

Designed a global range data acquisition system for the scientific missions of small UAVs. Utilized a PC104 CPU module to acquire sensor data from a custom-designed printed circuit board and communicate over the horizon using an Iridium modem. Implemented the design using Montavista Linux, Embedded C, and OrCAD.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Electrical And Computer Engineering

Master Of Science (M.S.), Electrical And Computer Engineering

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Electrical Engineering