Research in LUCAS is of significant interdisciplinary nature cross engineering, computer science, transport, agriculture and environment. Broadly speaking, current research falls into three core directions:
Development of advanced algorithms/methods for autonomous vehicles such as autopilot, situation awareness, path planning, and decision making. Particular focuses are on unmanned aerial vehicles, and intelligent ground vehicles.
Research in this direction includes the development contingence management to enable safe operation of autonomous vehicles or, more importantly, the development of new techniques/procedures to support verification and validation of new autonomous functions/systems to provide assurance.
This is an ever growing research direction, including the applications of artificial intelligence, data mining and autonomous system technologies in a wide range of sectors, from intelligent mobility and defence to agriculture and environment monitoring.