NEWS    MERL researchers present 3 papers at AIAA SciTech Forum 2026

Date released: January 27, 2026

  •  NEWS    MERL researchers present 3 papers at AIAA SciTech Forum 2026
  • Date:

    January 12, 2026 - January 16, 2026

  • Where:

    Orlando, Florida

  • Description:

    MERL researchers presented 3 papers at the recently concluded AIAA SciTech Forum 2026 in Orlando, Florida. The AIAA SciTech Forum is the flagship conference (more than 6,000 from 48 countries) of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the world's largest professional technical society dedicated to aerospace.
    The papers presented by MERL researchers covered 1) a powered descent decision making approach to maximize the probability of safe landing, 2) a set-based robust, optimal, and resilient control architecture for autonomous precision landing, and 3) a continuous-time safe control policy for passively-safe spacecraft rendezvous on a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit using successive convexification.

  • External Link:

    https://scitech.aiaa.org/

  • MERL Contacts:
  • Research Areas:

    Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization

    •  Elango, P., Vinod, A.P., Kitamura, K., Acikmese, B., Di Cairano, S., Weiss, A., "Continuous-Time Successive Convexification for Passively-Safe Spacecraft Rendezvous on a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit", AIAA SciTech Forum 2026, January 2026.
      BibTeX TR2026-016 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Elango2026jan,
      • author = {Elango, Purnanand and Vinod, Abraham P. and Kitamura, Kenji and Acikmese, Behcet and {Di Cairano}, Stefano and Weiss, Avishai},
      • title = {{Continuous-Time Successive Convexification for Passively-Safe Spacecraft Rendezvous on a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit}},
      • booktitle = {AIAA SciTech Forum 2026},
      • year = 2026,
      • month = jan,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-016}
      • }
    •  Kamath, A., Vinod, A.P., Elango, P., Di Cairano, S., Weiss, A., "Robust Optimal Control for Autonomous Precision Landing via Set-based Dynamic Programming", AIAA SciTech Forum, January 2026.
      BibTeX TR2026-015 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Kamath2026jan,
      • author = {Kamath, Abhinav and Vinod, Abraham P. and Elango, Purnanand and {Di Cairano}, Stefano and Weiss, Avishai},
      • title = {{Robust Optimal Control for Autonomous Precision Landing via Set-based Dynamic Programming}},
      • booktitle = {AIAA SciTech Forum},
      • year = 2026,
      • month = jan,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-015}
      • }
    •  Kento, T., Elango, P., Vinod, A.P., Di Cairano, S., Weiss, A., "Powered Descent Decision Making: A Reachability-Steering Approach", AIAA SciTech Forum, January 2026.
      BibTeX TR2026-014 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Kento2026jan,
      • author = {Kento, Tomita and Elango, Purnanand and Vinod, Abraham P. and {Di Cairano}, Stefano and Weiss, Avishai},
      • title = {{Powered Descent Decision Making: A Reachability-Steering Approach}},
      • booktitle = {AIAA SciTech Forum},
      • year = 2026,
      • month = jan,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-014}
      • }