Wang Receives Office of Naval Research’s Young Investigator Award
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced it will make 15 awards to scientists and engineers who submitted winning research proposals through the ONR's Young Investigator Program (YIP) in 2009.
Junmin Wang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, was one of those 15 awardees selected from 197 proposals submitted nationwide, and will receive funds totaling $427,265 that will support his research investigating integrated reconfigurable control and energy efficiency optimization for electric ground vehicles with independently actuated wheels.
Wang's research will investigate and develop systematic control methodologies to simultaneously maximize energy efficiency, maneuverability, agility, mobility, stability, and trajectory tracking capability of unmanned or manned electric ground vehicles (EGVs) having independently actuated wheel motors. Grounded in the fundamental understanding of the system dynamic relationships among EGV vehicle motions, battery, motor/wheel actuation, and tire-road interaction, a coherent and centralized reconfigurable control and energy optimization scheme will be developed to optimally and synergistically utilize the redundant individual wheel actuation to improve EGV energy efficiency/electric travel range as well as simultaneously enhance EGV maneuverability, stability, and trajectory tracking capability.
The objectives of the ONR Young Investigator Program are "to attract outstanding new faculty members at institutions of higher education to the Department of Navy's research program, to support their research, and to encourage their teaching and research careers."
According to ONR's announcements, this national competition for the YIP award has been severe with a typical success rate of about 10% in the past years. This year, the ONR's broad agency announcement in major areas of interest to the ONR resulted in 197 proposals. Among them, 15 proposals were selected. The ONR areas of interest include a wide range of various science and engineering disciplines. The awardees were selected by the ONR based on: "1) past performance, demonstrated by the significance and impact of previous research, publications, professional activities, awards and other recognition; 2) a creative proposal, demonstrating the potential for making progress in a listed priority research areas; 3) a long-term commitment by his/her institution to the applicant and the research."
