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By Stef Haarsager
For the past decade, the military has used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as spies, flying them into dangerous airspace and using their electronic eyes to gather intelligence. These aircraft, commonly called drones, are usually employed to carry out duties too dull, dirty, or dangerous for piloted aircraft. Since arriving at the University of North Dakota four years ago, senior electrical engineering major Brian Berseth has been researching and demonstrating UAV technologies in hopes of one day mainstreaming them into commercial use.
“In addition to refining military operations, UAVs can perform a wide range of environmental and civilian functions,” said Berseth, “including wildfire fighting, disaster response, and precision agriculture.” While learning to build synthetic camera networks for UAVs, Berseth turned his eyes to a more difficult problem facing UAV research. “The need for ‘sense-and-avoid’ capabilities is the Federal Aviation Administration’s largest concern regarding mainstreaming UAVs into commercial airspace,” said Berseth. “While at UND, I’ve had the opportunity to research and develop ways to create a complete UAV sense-and-avoid system, which allows the aircraft to sense obstacles and avoid collisions.”
While pursuing his undergraduate degrees, Berseth tackled the “sense-and-avoid” problem from both a technical and a business perspective. “While taking an entrepreneurship course, I began to imagine ways to commercialize UAV applications,” said Berseth. “Eventually, I would like to launch an aviation technologies company venture. Refining ‘sense-and-avoid’ capabilities will bring us closer to commercializing UAVs. And then, the sky’s the limit.”
In the summer of 2006, Berseth received a North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) Advanced Undergraduate Research Award (AURA) and founded an Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Sense & Avoid group to research and develop a complete UAV collision avoidance system. Berseth earned a certificate in entrepreneurship and a private pilot license this spring, and after completing his undergraduate studies at UND, Berseth will begin graduate studies at Stanford University in California. A recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, which covers graduate school tuition and expenses for three years, Berseth’s UAV sense-and-avoid research will be a welcome addition to Stanford’s engineering program.
Richard Schultz, associate professor and chair of the UND Electrical Engineering Department said, “The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is the most prestigious scholarship for graduate students, and Brian is well-prepared for his graduate studies at Stanford. We wish him the best of luck, and are extremely pleased that he started his education in electrical engineering at UND.”
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