Up, up and away

You could say that Liang Sun, Ph.D., has a controlling interest in engineering. As a child, he loved remote control cars.

As a graduate student in electrical engineering, he focused on control systems.

And now, as the director of Baylor’s Advanced Vehicle Intelligence and Autonomy (AVIA) Laboratory, he’s working to optimize control of airborne vehicles using artificial intelligence (AI).

His research projects integrate AI techniques into just about every sphere of aerospace, from air taxis to energy-harvesting kites to ground-controlled drones. And he does it all with the help of a tight-knit group of students who seem to care as much about each other’s wellbeing as about their finished products.

“No matter what we do, we do it as a group,” said Sun. “That’s something that really has motivated me every day… We’re not only doing these things for the final product, but we are serving each other.”

Finding himself at Baylor

Sun landed at Baylor in the fall of 2024, excited by the prospect of teaching alongside his wife, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management Yang Sophie Yang-Sun. They feel blessed to have found a place they both could call home.

Sun was also excited by Baylor’s location in the heart of Texas, close to Dallas, Austin and Houston — where he felt he could expand his research connections and capacity — and by Baylor’s Christian, student-centered mission.

Now, just two short years later, Sun has made strong connections with industry partners, was named an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and earlier this year won an Outstanding University Faculty award from the AIAA North Texas Section. He’s even established a student chapter of AIAA, which helps connect students to experts in the aerospace field all over the world.

While there are currently aerospace-related student clubs and associations existing at Baylor, their reach is mostly local within Texas.

“Having this AIAA student chapter will push Baylor student participation to an international level,” said Sun. “Plus, companies like SpaceX and L3Harris have already come to Baylor, showing interest in hiring students in the aerospace field. This AIAA student chapter will really help open new doors.”

Where Harry Potter meets AI

Students are already hard at work (and play) in Sun’s AVIA lab. Last year the lab established a drone soccer facility, featuring a playing field akin to a Quidditch pitch in the Harry Potter series. Students go head-to-head controlling drones that shoot goals into hoops on either end of the field — either against each other or against AI-operated drones that are learning how to master the game using reinforcement learning.

“Reinforcement learning is one of our lab’s areas of expertise,” said Sun, who added that they teach the drones how to mimic human behavior using a “Sense, Think, Act” paradigm. The drones have sensors on board that mimic humans’ ability to see, feel and hear, as well as computer chips that process that information and make decisions, much like the human brain.

The drone can then “act” via motors, or actuators, that control its movements.

The drone soccer facility was set up for both education purposes — say, to local K–12 schools — and to help drum up interest in and excitement for Baylor’s recently established Aerospace degree program.

Serving native communities

The AVIA Lab is also using high-tech drones to help the Navajo Nation plan a pumped storage hydropower project in Arizona’s Carrizo Mountains. The reservoir would produce consistent energy and storage for the remote area and create substantial regional benefits.

To get a lay of the land, long-range drones operated by Sun’s lab are being deployed to survey nine separate areas across roughly 30 square miles of rugged terrain. The drones’ on-board cameras produce centimeter-accurate elevation models that engineers can use to evaluate reservoir sites, tunnel alignments and access routes.

For students, the project offers something a simulation can’t: a field campaign with real people on the other side of the deliverable.

“They learn that engineering doesn’t end when the data is good,” said Sun. “It ends when the community is served.”

Getting air taxis off the ground

Through a NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) project, Sun and his lab are mapping out the infrastructure needs of eVTOLs — or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. These “flying cars,” currently in development by companies like Joby Aviation and Volocopter, run on efficient electricity and are quieter, less expensive and safer than helicopters.

Industry envisions they could work like a self-driving air taxi, spiriting passengers from, say, DFW Airport to downtown Waco. But creating infrastructure from scratch for this new technology requires significant planning.

“We need to answer several key questions,” said Sun. “How many people would adopt this new technology? Where would the service portals be? How much energy would we need?”

The answers to those questions will eventually come together in an AI-driven stakeholder tool developed by Sun and his collaborators. The tool will ultimately help stakeholders improve efficiency and ensure these concepts are efficient and sustainable for the long term.

Responsible AI integration

AI can be used to maximize efficiency in other areas, too. For example, in partnership with the Toyota Research Institute, Sun is using AI to optimize kite energy harvesting systems.

In these systems, kites are lifted up by the wind, connected by a tether to a power generator that converts the kite’s kinetic energy to electricity.

“Typically, wind is uncontrollable and unpredictable,” said Sun. “Our focus is on developing the AI-enabled controller to optimize the harvested energy.”

In another collaboration with NASA, Rice University and the University of Houston, Sun’s team is working on a Transformational Technology Tool, or T3. The tool uses “uncertainty-aware” AI techniques in relation to advanced air mobility — which is aimed at opening airspace in a more involved way to more and different types of vehicles (like those eVTOLs).

“We are not only developing AI-based solutions, but we are also giving an assessment of the uncertainty or confidence about those decisions,” said Sun.

Those assessments will help future designers and developers of airborne vehicles understand what processes can safely be left to AI and which are better left to human judgment.

Keeping the lab human-focused

Sun feels it’s a privilege to work on these cutting-edge projects that support our society, make aviation safe and efficient and make AI technology responsible.

“But we are not only producing emerging technologies to address society’s needs,” said Sun. “As professors, we are also training and coaching the next-generation workforce in aviation and aerospace. So we must think, how can these products be utilized as a vessel to support our students, to support future workforce development?”

Sun’s commitment to his students is clear, as he facilitates a Bible study within the lab and ensures he spends time each day with students getting to know them and what’s going on in their personal lives.

“Our mission is not just about these new technologies,” said Sun. “Our approach should be human. It should be what God wants. Because He’s the designer of the entire universe.”