Derek Kingston

United States Air Force, United States Air Force Research Laboratory

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Derek Kingston is a leading researcher in autonomous systems, with a primary focus on the coordination and control of multi-agent robotic teams, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). His work bridges the gap between high-level mission planning and low-level vehicle dynamics, addressing critical challenges in deploying autonomous swarms. Kingston’s major contributions include pioneering the Unmanned Systems Autonomy Services (UxAS) framework, a modular architecture that enables rapid development and execution of complex, ad-hoc UAV missions with minimal human oversight—a concept that has garnered 45 citations. He has also advanced formal methods in robotics, applying Process Algebra to rigorously specify and plan UAV missions (30 citations), ensuring provable mission compliance. Additionally, his research on collective circular motion and cooperative circumnavigation (14 citations) provides foundational algorithms for nonholonomic robots to achieve coordinated behaviors using only range-based measurements. Through these works, Kingston has significantly influenced the practical realization of autonomous aerial swarms, making his research essential reading for students and engineers working on multi-robot systems, formal mission specification, and decentralized control.