Evanns Morales-Cuadrado
Robotics Ph.D. student · Georgia Tech · Fulbright Specialist
Evanns Morales-Cuadrado
I work on safe autonomy for hardware systems with a focus on uncertainty-aware safe trajectory planning, aggressive low-level control, and lightweight algorithms for computationally constrained platforms. My more recent work has brought me into the worlds of formal methods and deep reinforcement learning for real-world quadrotors.
As part of my work, I have also had the pleasure of breaking many quadrotors and putting them back together.
Education
Honors
Inside the Lab
I am a Robotics/ECE Ph.D. student in the Formal Methods & Autonomous Control of Transportation Systems (FACTS) Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology under the supervision of Dr. Samuel Coogan.
My robotics work centers around hardware applications of safe autonomous control algorithms. In particular, I work on safe and efficient path planning and control synthesis in the face of onboard computational constraints. Much of my work involves hardware demonstrations of novel methods on quadrotor UAVs and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). As a result, I’ve accumulated some cool videos of things flying autonomously and a lot of terrible videos of them crashing.
My Latest Project
RTD-RAX
My Runtime-Assurance eXtension (RAX) of the Reachability-based Trajectory Design (RTD) framework for fast candidate trajectory generation paired with an online, disturbance-aware verification layer to produce trajectories that avoid obstacles and achieve mission objectives while facing uncertain dynamics and real-world disturbances. RTD-RAX extends traditional RTD by separating fast candidate generation from online safety certification. The planner stays agile, while a fast online verifier utilizing Mixed Monotone Reachability (MMR) certifies each trajectory under the actual measured conditions and repairs unsafe candidates before execution.
Beyond the Lab
Roots
Boricua de pura cepa
At Georgia Tech I helped co-found "BORI" to provide a welcoming place for Puerto Rican students and promote our culture across campus.
Research
When at work
From undergraduate research at UT Arlington to my Ph.D. at Georgia Tech. After a summer in Albuquerque, NM at Sandia National Laboratories, I'm continuing there year-round as an AI for Autonomy research intern.
Recreation
Life
I spend whole days outside playing basketball when I'm able to. These days, you can catch me at salsa & bachata socials.