John-Paul “J-P” Clarke is a College of Engineering Dean’s Professor who holds appointments in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Clarke is a leading expert in aircraft trajectory prediction and optimization, especially as it pertains to the development of flight procedures that reduce the environmental impact of aviation.
Clarke has served on several national committees that are defining the future research agenda for aviation. He was co-chair of the committee that developed the U.S. National Agenda for Autonomy Research related to civil aviation, and a member of the committee that reviewed the Next Generation Air Transportation System. In July 2018, Clarke provided congressional testimony before the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives.
In Clarke’s vision, for the future of urban air mobility to be realized, we will need to address a wide range of challenges and research opportunities related to autonomy, modeling and optimization, and policy:
• Passenger and cargo aircraft must be designed for both autonomous operations and autonomous decision-making.
• The scheduling and management of vertiport arrivals and departures must be more precise and timely than currently possible, and will also require systems that can operate autonomously.
• Vertiport locations and flight trajectories must be jointly optimized for efficiency, noise, privacy, and safety.
• Legislation may be needed with respect to certification requirements for vehicles, systems, and operators.
Listen to Clarke’s congressional testimony here.
Learn more about Clarke’s research here.