AFRL researcher impacts community with runtime assurance

Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, Controls Engineer Capt. Christian Potts, left, and Program Manager Amy Burns, right, watch from the simulation control room at AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate while 2nd Lt. Ryan Collins demonstrates automatic fly up maneuvers in a virtual flight simulator generated by the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto GCAS, Dec. 6, 2022, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Auto GCAS is a software update developed by AFRL, Lockheed Martin and NASA that prevents an aircraft from impacting the ground by automatically pulling the aircraft up before an accident can occur. Kerianne Hobbs, safe autonomy and space lead with the Autonomy Capability Team, or ACT3, for the Sensors Directorate at AFRL, was the lead author of a 38-page spread in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Control Systems Magazine, titled Runtime assurance for safety-critical systems: An introduction to safety filtering approaches for complex control systems, for her extensive research in runtime assurance. (U.S. Air Force photo / Richard Eldridge)