ASTAR Lab: Autonomous Systems TRust & Assurance

Our mission is to advance the security, resilience, and trustworthiness of AI-powered autonomous systems. We focus on safeguarding UAVs, autonomous vehicles, and smart transportation networks against cyber and physical threats through cutting-edge research in trustworthy AI, secure localization, multi-modal sensing, and resilient cyber-physical infrastructures.

Current Members

Students

Zhiyuan Chen – Ph.D. Student
Kowshik – Graduate Assistant (GA)

Past Members

Dev Patel – Graduate Student
Augusto – Graduate Student

Research Facilities & Equipment

Custom-built research drone with flight controller and remote controller — **MM-AIR UAV Testbed** — custom-built research drones with PX4 flight controller, onboard computing, camera, and telemetry radio for flight-operational UAV security experiments.

Distributed Raspberry Pi wireless sensing nodes and a drone mounted on tripods outdoors — **Wireless UAV Sensing Testbed** — distributed Raspberry Pi nodes for WiFi CSI and RSSI sensing, supporting outdoor UAV detection, tracking, and RF-source analysis.

Full-size self-driving vehicle testbed with roof-mounted sensor suite — **Full-Size Self-Driving Vehicle** — equipped with LiDAR, camera, radar, IMU, and GNSS, accessible through our collaboration with Dr. Ho's Autonomous Vehicles and Robotics Laboratory at UNL.

The lab also has access to Douglas County GIS data — 4 TB of aerial imagery covering the Omaha area plus airborne LiDAR — supporting research on cross-view localization and GPS-independent navigation.

Grants Supporting ASTAR Lab

[New] NSF, "CRII: SaTC: MUSE: MUlti-modal Security Enhancement for Cyber Resilient UAV Operation," Period: 10/01/2025 - 09/30/2027, $175k, Role: Sole-PI, Project Info: MUSE
NRI, "TRUST-V2X: Enhancing Security and Trustworthiness of AI in Multi-Modal Collaborative Sensing for Autonomous Vehicles to Everything," $100K, 2025-2026, Role: PI, Project Info: TBA.

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