ECE Prof Awarded DOD Grant for Tracking Systems Research

November 26, 2012

Chung-Hao Chen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in Old Dominion University's Batten College of Engineering and Technology, has received a $210,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to further research into tracking systems following more than one target.

The grant, which totaled $1.1 million in collaboration with the University of Tennessee, seeks to develop techniques to design a target handoff platform for multi-sensor/multi-target tracking systems.

The research is an effort to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of target tracking, so that a timely handoff can be triggered in the tracking system. This is particularly important when the target being tracked is of strategic importance.

Chen was also awarded $10,000 from the Virginia Space Grant Consortium to develop curricula to attract, recruit, retain and involve more students in the STEM degree and research programs. This investment includes support for ODU's participation in the 23rd annual International Aerial Robotics Competition last summer in Grand Forks, N.D.

For its entry in the competition, a team of seven ODU undergraduate students - John LeVous, Julie Hoven, Victor Habgood, Brandon Ordway, Garibe Mohammed-Jones, Abdulrahman Alotaibi and Haole Guo - needed to design an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of entering a structure with an unknown interior floor plan; locating and retrieving a pre-defined object; and avoiding detection from, or disabling, interior and exterior security measures.

The ODU team finished sixth out of 30 participating universities in the competition.