Frank van Graas (right), Maarten Uijt de Haag (middle), Wouter Pelgrum (left) – Professors in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Researchers with the Avionics Engineering Center at Ohio University

• Image Taken by Mark Dawson

How did you get into electrical engineering and when did you start?

• Frank: I built my first circuit when I was approximately 5 years old. It consisted of a 4.5-V battery, a switch and a light bulb. From that time on, I wanted to learn as much as I could about electronics, and by the time I was twelve years old, I already planned to get an advanced degree in electrical engineering.

• Maarten: Early on in high-school I became fascinated with electronics and spent a significant amount of time “playing” with commercially available electronics circuit kits. After that I moved on to building electronics-based alarm systems for my room and small robots that could move freely through our house. An even though I contemplated going in aeronautical engineering I decided in the end to get a degree in Electrical Engineering.

• Wouter: I have always been interested in engineering, especially electrical engineering. As a little kid I wired AC light bulbs before I could read, invested all my money on Lego and spent countless hours building elaborate constructions. In high school I got myself into a wide range of activities, such as audio engineering, special effects, video productions, and wireless communications.

How did you arrive at Ohio University?

• Frank: I was studying at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, finishing up the “engineers” degree. GPS had become one of my research interests, but it was difficult to find information about GPS in Europe. Through Delft University, I found out that Ohio University had an active differential GPS program with NASA to land helicopters. It turned out that one of my professors, Gerrit de Jong, knew a professor at Ohio University, Kent Chamberlin, from an electromagnetics conference in Spain. I contacted prof. Chamberlin and asked if I could come to visit for a few months. That all worked out and within 2 weeks I was working on the NASA program. When it was time for me to return to Delft University, I was offered a research associate position at Ohio and ended up finishing my Ph.D. there instead of at Delft University. Shortly before I graduated, a faculty position in Avionics opened up at Ohio. I couldn’t imagine a better position, so I applied and joined the faculty in 1988.

• Maarten: While I was studying at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, I met Dr. Michael Braasch from Ohio University and a former student of Dr. Frank van Graas. He was part of an exchange program between Ohio University and Deft University of Technology. I worked with him on Global Positioning System (GPS) related work for my M.S.E.E. and he served on my thesis committee. After finishing up my degree at Delft, I got a scholarship to go abroad and work for 6 months. I contacted Ohio University and went over there for 6 months. At Ohio University I met Dr. Frank van Graas and he offered me a job as a research engineer with the Ohio University Avionics Engineering center. Besides my regular job I did some substitute teaching for Frank and when he asked me if I wanted to get my Ph.D. I was excited. After finishing up my Ph.D. I became a visiting professor in 1999 and when a permanent position opened up in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, I applied and got the job in 2000.

• Wouter: When I did my Masters at Delft University, Professor Durk van Willigen came back from retirement to be my advisor for my thesis on H-field antennas for Low-Frequency radionavigation systems. This work got me in contact with the navigation community, and also with the people from the Avionics Engineering Center at Ohio University, Frank van Graas especially. In 2005 Frank arranged for me to spend 6 months in Ohio, primarily to focus on finishing my Ph.D. dissertation. In 2006, just before finishing my Ph.D., I started my own company specializing on radionavigation and did a variety of projects for Ohio University. When a faculty position opened up at Ohio University in 2008 I applied and got the job, which I started in 2009.

Can you tell us about your work experience before arriving at Ohio University?

• Frank: During my student years, I was always working on challenging electronics projects, such as a telephone system that connected 4 telephones to the same line and automatically kept track of the charges for each individual telephone, audio systems, power supplies, and sensitive magnetic field sensors.

• Maarten: During my student years, I worked on a variety of electronics project including the telephone distribution system at my fraternity. Also, I did some work as a software engineer at a small (15 people) chemical engineering company where I end up running the software department for a year. At Delft University I was furthermore a teaching assistant in the communications labs.

• Wouter: While still in colleg,e I started a company that provided live video coverage of rowing races. We borrowed equipment from pretty much every electrical engineering research group of the university, ranging from high-end video cameras to experimental fiber optic video communication systems. That combined with home-brew wireless video and audio links, computer systems, and countless custom-build solutions we were able to provide a professional product at very low cost. Projects like these taught me to be creative, have risk-mitigation strategies for every conceivable situation in place, and, most importantly, to build an enthusiastic team of people to get the job done and to have fun while doing it.
  Next to my video production activities, I also jumped into Linux, and build a massive storage and content delivery system consisting of a robust cluster of dozens of unreliable network servers. Now, a decade later, I still apply the lessons learned from that project to every data collection we conduct.
  During most of my Ph.D. studies I worked for Reelektronika, a small company in the Netherlands. Although work and studies were on the same topic, it proved to be a great challenge to balance the short-term pressure from the company with the long-term goals of a Ph.D. At Reelektronika I worked on eLoran, a Low-Frequency radionavigation system, on the H-field antenna, receiver algorithms, receiver design and implementation, measurement campaigns, and data analysis.
  In 2006 I started my own company, consulting in radionavigation-related areas.

What have been some of your influences that have helped you get to where you are today?

• Frank: My father was a major influence on my career; he would occasionally help me with trouble-shooting my projects, which helped me to realize that there aren’t always quick fixes or easy answers. He would build everything from scratch, including all his measurement instrumentation. Growing up, we were the first in our neighborhood with a black and white television because he built it himself. The drawback was that we were the last to switch to a color TV, since he always managed to fix his black and white product, no matter what went wrong. From that experience, I learned that it is important to know all the details of a project.

• Maarten: Even though my parents were not engineers, they very much encouraged my interests in electronic systems and aeronautics during my high-school years. When I got to college and started working on my M.S.E.E. my advisor, Dr. Durk van Willigen really stimulated my interests in electronics for aircraft (avionics). After my move to Ohio University Frank van Graas took over that role and also got me interested the teaching and student advising which made me decide to go into academia.

• Wouter: My parents always greatly supported and encouraged my interests in science and engineering. In college it was my M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. advisor Dr. Durk van Willigen who got me excited about the area of radionavigation and Dr. Frank van Graas who brought me in contact with Ohio University and has mentored me here in the US.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

• Frank: Learn all the basic concepts in math, physics and electrical engineering. Sooner or later, you’ll need them all in your career to solve a variety of problems. After a while, you’ll recognize the parallels and that it all connects to the same basic concepts.

• Maarten: Try to express your complex engineering problems in terms of basic concepts of electrical engineering. Furthermore, always ask yourself what you want to achieve with your electronics system, what you are going to use it for, and who is going to use it.

• Wouter: Prepare for everything, whatever can go wrong will go wrong at some point, no matter whether you are programming a software algorithm or are involved in the field-testing of a complex system. And then, typically, when you are fully prepared for every conceivable scenario and have backups for everything, you won’t need any of your backups because your system will just work…

What has been your favorite project?

• Frank: I have several favorite projects, but it is hard to top the project we did for FAA in 1994, when we leased an empty Boeing 757 over the weekend from the United Parcel Service in Louisville, KY, loaded it up with two first-class chairs and a rack with electronics, hacked into the 757 autopilot to make it fly our GPS guidance instead of its trusted triple-redundant Instrument Landing System, flew to FAA’s test site at Atlantic City Airport, NJ, executed 50 automatic landings in a row, flew back to Louisville and unbolted the equipment while taxiing to the gate so that we could turn the aircraft back over to UPS to reconfigure and recertify the aircraft for overnight package delivery. This project was part of an FAA demonstration program to show that GPS can be used to land airplanes.

• Maarten: My favorite project was the design, implementation and flight test of a navigation system that uses on one or more airborne laser scanning systems (as are currently being used to build maps of large portions of the US). We first flew this system and a data collection onboard a NASA DC-8 at Dryden Research Center at Edwards Air Force base and Reno, NV. Next, we designed and installed a smaller, less expensive system on our DC-3 and performed various approaches to an airport in West Virginia while providing the pilot with the necessary guidance on an LCD display. This project was I part sponsored by NASA, the Air Force Research Laboratory and Northrop-Grumman.

• Wouter: I have been involved with many exciting projects. The most fulfilling moments are those when a team-effort leads to a great result. For example with my video productions where I had a team of great people making an excellent product. The technology had been painstakingly prepared and worked flawlessly, but the greatest joy is to share that fulfillment with your team. Similarly for the snowplow competition, where we all worked to the maximum of our abilities to achieve an optimal result. It is a great pleasure to see the students grow throughout those projects and from project to project and see them become successful in their discipline.

Will you tell us about some of the projects you have worked on in the past?

• Frank: Past projects have ranged from automatic GPS landing systems for airplanes and helicopters, to using GPS for aircraft attitude and heading determination by mounting multiple antennas on the airplane, GPS receiver design, precision GPS navigation projects for aircraft and ground vehicles and integration of GPS with numerous other navigation sensors.

• Maarten: I have worked on a large variety of projects ranging from integrity monitors for terrain databases used on flight displays on the flight deck (so-called synthetic vision displays), automatic GPS landing systems for airplanes, GPS receiver design, laser-based and camera-based navigation systems for aircraft, unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles, alerting and notification systems for commercial aircraft including collision avoidance systems using GPS, and integrated system build around inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes).

• Wouter: Since I joined Ohio University I have worked on a wide variety of projects. We have built a GPS/Inertial/Rubidium integrated positioning, velocity, attitude, and time truth system that is now used on almost all our tests. I have consulted NAVTEQ on streamlining their process from data collection, optimal processing algorithms, to map generation. We installed and operate GPS ionosphere monitoring systems in Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Singapore, which has already provided some very interesting data and subsequent publications. I have optimized H-field antennas for sub-terrain positioning. And we just completed the data delivery of a massive data collection effort for DARPA where we equipped a van with 36 and our DC3 with 24 different navigation sensors.

What was your role in the projects?

• Frank: For these projects, I was the Principal Investigator, but I also participated in writing the software, soldering circuits, trouble-shooting the hardware and digging holes to plant antennas in the field.

• Maarten: For most of these projects, I was the Principal Investigator; on others I was a research engineer. In all cases I actively participated in the projects and had to write software and put hardware together.

• Wouter: On some projects I have been the (Co) Principal Investigator, on others researcher. My role within these projects ranges from analytical research to soldering circuits, from project management to software programming, and typically all of the above in the same project.

What was your favorite part of the project?

• Frank: To me all phases of a project are exciting, starting with the concept, design and implementation to the operational testing and data analyses.

• Maarten: Besides the fact that we would look at the problem all the way from concept through design to implementation and testing of the systems, I really do enjoy the interaction with my students. Seeing them learn and become more mature engineers is a delight to see!

• Wouter: It is fantastic if a complex project comes together, when it actually works after many late nights, and when you have a great team to share your success with.

Where was the technology used?

• Frank: Most of our projects use computers, microcontrollers, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), analog to digital converters, radio frequency front-ends and antennas.

• Maarten: Our projects used a large number of electronics components including computers, RF transmitters and receivers, measuring equipment such as oscilloscopes, spectrum and network analyzers, microcontrollers, FPGAs, but also laser scanners, cameras, and a large number of actual avionics systems (inertial navigation systems, air data computers, weather radar, radio altimeters, GPS receivers, etc.).

• Wouter: We use a wide range of equipment. Computers, micro controllers, FPGAs, RF antennas, filters, amplifiers, mixers, custom and commercial RF data collection setups, signal generators, spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes, 1-way and 2-way communication equipment, inertial sensors, cameras, laser, IR, GPS, etc.

What were the challenges/successes of the project?

• Frank: For me, the biggest challenge of a research project is the planning and making sure the project is completed before the funding runs out. It is difficult to predict when the right solutions are invented for a particular problem. Nevertheless, based on first principles from math and physics, the feasibility of a particular approach can usually be determined. Somehow, everything always seems to come together at the last minute.

• Maarten: The biggest challenge for me was the planning and coordination of the work given the time frame, available funding, available students and engineers and collaborators at other institutions an din industry. Especially, the latter required a considerable effort in keeping everybody on the same page and getting the job done. In terms of actually solving the problem, we are always very successful in coming up with an elegant solution that makes sense for the problem. A key to the successes has always been to find good students and carefully train and motivate them so they could be very productive on the research projects.

• Wouter: The biggest challenge is getting everything done in time and within budget while balancing time and energy among multiple projects.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

• Frank: I have been fortunate to work on GPS since the early days with plenty of “low-hanging” fruit, which resulted in the Johannes Kepler Award for “sustained and significant contributions to satellite navigation,” from the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, the Colonel Thomas L. Thurlow Award for “outstanding contribution to the science of navigation,” from The Institute of Navigation and the John Ruth Avionics Award for “outstanding lifetime achievement in the area of GPS navigation,” from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

• Maarten: For my work on synthetic visions systems and my laser-based navigation work, I did receive the Institute of Navigation, the Colonel Thomas L. Thurlow Award for “outstanding contribution to the science of navigation.” My work in these “new” areas of engineering allowed me to do some really innovating research.

Will you tell us about the autonomous snow plow competition and winning the competition for the second year in a row

• Frank: For any competition, testing is the key to success. For the first competition, we were testing through the night in the basement parking lot of our hotel up until a few hours before the competition. This year, we realized that lack of snowfall was going to limit our testing in Ohio, so we contacted Dan Morris, director of Ohio University’s Bird Ice Arena and he generously provided us with snow by scraping the ice with his zamboni. We then trucked the snow to our test area. Sometimes, half of the snow melted before we were able to plow it. When we arrived in St. Paul, MN, for the competition, there was no snow either. The competition organizers also turned to local ice rinks to provide snow for the competition.

• Maarten: Having a solid and well-tested design with a very good user-interface that allowed for easy implementations of new robot strategies, really made the road to this competition much easier. Especially, Dr. Wouter Pelgum with the help of the students was instrumental to this design. This made testing much easier and as such we were actually ready to go before we went to the competition instead of having to work late hours at the competition.

• Wouter: When we competed the first time we pretty much build the robot from the ground up which was an enormous effort. The first moment when we were ready to close the control loop was the night before the competition. We confiscated an underground parking garage and worked through the night to fix the final bugs and tune the controls.
  For the second competition we were in much better shape since we had a good robot to start with, but we also decided to set our goals significantly higher this time. Our robot M.A.C.S. had to be much faster (up to 2 m/s), more precise (cm-level total system error), heavier, and more powerful. This required us to rebuild most of the mechanics, replace the motors, the motor controllers, and optimize the software. Furthermore, we spent countless hours testing. To test the impact of snow loading on the controls we extensively tested with different amounts of snow, plow widths, and plow speeds while monitoring the robot’s telemetry. Prior to the competition we replicated the entire competition field using snow we trucked in from the Ohio University’s Bird Ice Arena. This provided us with the most realistic testing environment, leaving nothing to chance at the competition. All and all this got us in the slightly bizarre situation that we didn’t have to change a single line of code during the competition, nothing to repair, everything just worked, leaving us with enough time to help out the other teams and to jump around in our obnoxious yellow suits to entertain the audience.

What are you currently working on?

• Frank: I’m working on a variety of research programs ranging from improved atomic frequency references, GPS-based aircraft landing systems, camera-based navigation, ionospheric studies to navigation in space.

• Maarten: I’m working on a variety of research programs including alerting systems for commercial aircraft including GPS-based surveillance and collision avoidance, laser- and camera-based integrated navigation, advanced flight displays for the future flight deck and navigation, guidance and surveillance systems for small-size unmanned aerial systems for indoor and urban operations (search and rescue, etc.).

• Wouter: I am researching the possibilities of upgrading the Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) system to meet the stringent demands of next generation aviation. With this, we can provide a backup in case GPS is not available due to, for example, interference.

Can you tell us more about Ohio University and the technology they are developing?

• Frank: Our Avionics Engineering Center provides education for the next generation of avionics engineers, improves existing systems and develops new technologies for aircraft and spacecraft navigation.

• Maarten: At the Ohio University Avionics Engineering Center we train the next generation avionics engineers and help improve the safety and performance of existing avionics systems, or design, develop and flight test new technologies for aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. Of course, our work on navigation system for ground vehicles (such as the snow plow) provides a fantastic platform for the students to get familiar with the issues and engineering problems in developing a navigation system.

How does Ohio University continue to be a leader in avionics engineering?

• Frank: We not only develop new technologies, but we also use, maintain and upgrade the current navigation systems. Key to our leadership position is our aircraft fleet that includes a King Air C90SE, a Douglas Dakota DC-3, a L29 Delfin jet trainer, and several single-engine aircraft. Our practical knowledge of the current problems and system limitations enables us to develop new technologies that can be transitioned into the National Airspace System.

• Maarten: Ohio University continues to be a leader in avionics engineering because of our faculty and staff, our good relationships with our sponsors, and the fantastic fleet of aircraft (and airport to go with it) that we have to evaluate our new technologies. This gives us a unique edge and insight in what it takes to get a system on an actual aircraft.

What direction do you see your business/research heading in the next few years?

• Frank: Aircraft are becoming more autonomous, especially with the mandated introduction of uninhabited aerial systems (UAS) into commercial airspace by Sept. 30, 2015. To enable additional aircraft in the National Airspace System, the Federal Aviation Administration is pursing what is referred to as Performance-Based Navigation.

• Maarten: A large focus will be on the next generation airspace, air traffic management and aircraft. In the future we will see a much busier airspace with a higher density of aircraft including unmanned aerial vehicles. This will mean that we need to start coming u with improvements in a large number of areas including the areas where we focus our research efforts: navigation, surveillance and communication.

What are some new technologies we can expect to see from Ohio University in the near future?

• Frank: We are working on a variety of navigation sensors for aircraft and UAS to increase airspace capacity and safety.

• Maarten: We will be putting a lot of efforts in coming up with new navigation, surveillance and communication systems and their user interfaces for the future aerial vehicles.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

• Frank: The primary challenge I foresee for our industry is complexity and the challenge of preparing the next generation of engineers to excel in an environments of rapidly increasing knowledge.

• Maarten: One of the challenges will be to maintain the avionics-engineering work force while keeping the quality of the engineers the same or even improve it. This will require a solid training of these new engineers in the various electrical engineering programs and motivating of high-school students to pursue careers in electrical engineering.

• Wouter: A highly educated workforce is essential to stay on top of the ever-increasing state-of-the-art technology, and to remain competitive in a global market. We need to stay focused on quality education at the high school level, combined with creating a healthy interest in mathematics and science, followed by excellent but affordable higher education that matches the student’s capacities.

What are some of your hobbies outside of work and design?

• Frank: My wife Janet is a performing musician; we both get up every morning and wonder how it is possible that we are getting paid for what we love to do – our jobs are our biggest hobbies. Besides our work, we enjoy Christian ministries, traveling and spending time with our family and friends.

• Maarten: My main hobby outside of work is music: I do play the saxophone and flute and am active in a couple of bands. Besides this hobby I love to spend time with my family (wife and daughter)!

• Wouter: When I’m not working I like to do sports. Southeastern Ohio is a great place to cycle, and I love to push myself to the limit on the endless county roads surrounding Athens.

Is there anything that you have not accomplished yet, that you have your sights on accomplishing in the near future?

• Frank: My primary goal for the near future is to take two of our patented research technologies and turn them into products, the first is a laser-guided aircraft landing system and the second is a revolutionary GPS receiver design.

• Maarten: Professionally, I have my sights set on a couple of goals for the near-term. This first is to get my work in laser-based navigation and vision-based navigation transitioned to a small fleet of UAVs. The other is to have a real-time flight demonstration of my work on altering systems on one of our aircraft. Personally, I am looking forward to the birth of my son in August!

• Wouter: I am currently pursuing a grant to extend my DME work to provide a steady multi-year funding basis for further research and development. Furthermore, I hope to get tenure soon… On the longer term, I am entertaining the plan to combine my duties as a Professor with commercial activities around one or more of the advanced technologies we are developing.