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Randy Beard

Randy Beard

Curriculum Vitae      

Randal W. Beard received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, in 1991, the M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1993, the M.S. degree in mathematics in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1995, all from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y. Since 1996, he has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, where he is currently the department chair and holds the Steven V. White University Professorship. His research interests are in navigation, guidance, and control of unmanned air vehicles, autonomous robotic systems, and multiple vehicle coordination and control. He is a fellow of the IEEE and of the AIAA. He is a former associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the Journal of Intelligent and Robotics Systems, and the IEEE Control Systems Magazine. He has received numerous awards for his research and teaching including the 2018 Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, BYU’s top faculty award, and the 2024 AIAA Intelligent Systems Award. He is the author of the textbook Small Unmanned Aircraft: Theory and Practice, published by Princeton University Press, and several other textbooks. He has published over 250 research articles and secured over $20M in research funding. His students have won numerous competitions and awards for their work on micro air vehicles.

Contact Information

Selected Classes Taught

  • ECEn 240/301: Introduction to Circuits
  • ECEn 380: Introduction to Signals and Systems
  • ECEn 483: Introduction to Feedback Control
  • ECEn 536: Autonomous Aircraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control.
  • ECEn 671: Mathematics of Signals and Systems
  • ECEn 773: Linear Systems Theory
  • ECEn 774: Nonlinear Systems

Research Interests

  • Control Theory
  • Autonomous Vehicles
  • Robotics
  • Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Publications

Google Scholar

Selected Books

  • Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. McLain, Marc Killpack, Cammy Peterson, Introduction to Feedback Control using Design Studies, GitHub, pdf, Amazon
  • Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. McLain, Small Unmanned Aircraft: Theory and Practice, Princeton University Press, 2012, ISBN: 978-06-911-4921-9. Amazon

Selected Articles

  • Kyle Leland, Clark Taylor, David Woodburn, Randal Beard, “Spline-Based, Factor-Graph Optimization with High-Grad Inertial Sensors,” Navigation, vol. 73, doi: https://doi.org/10.33012/navi.742, January 2026.
  • Easton Potokar, Randal W. Beard, Joshua Mangelson, “An Introduction to the Invariant Extended Kalman Filter [Lecture Notes],” IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Vol 44, No 6, p. 50-71, December 2024. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10752718.
  • Alex D. Jordan, Jacob C. Johnson, Timothy W. McLain, Randal W. Beard, “GNSS/Camera Extrinsic Calibration Using Splines on SE(3),” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2023. Early Access at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10103592.
  • Jacob C. Johnson, Joshua G. Mangelson, Randal W. Beard, “Continuous-time Trajectory Estimation for Differentially Flat Systems,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 145-151,
  • Jacob Johnson, Randal W. Beard, “Globally-Attractive Logarithmic Geometric Control of a Quadrotor for Aggressive Trajectory Tracking,” IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS), vol. 6, p. 2216-2221, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9672147, 2022.
  • Peter C. Niedfeldt, Randal W. Beard, “Convergence and Complexity Analysis of Recursive-RANSAC: A New Multiple Target Tracking Algorithm,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 61, no. 2, p. 456-461, February, 2016.
  • Robert Leishman, John Macdonald, Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. McLain, “Quadrotors and Accelerometers: State Estimation with an Improved Dynamic Model,” IEEE Control Systems Magazine, vol. 34, no. 1, p. 28-41, February, 2014.
  • Rajnikant Sharma, Randal W. Beard, Clark N. Taylor, Stephen Quebe, “Graph-based Observability Analysis of Bearing-only Cooperative Localization,” IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol. 28, No. 2, p. 522-529, April, 2012.
  • Randal Beard, Timothy McLain, Derek Nelson, Derek Kingston, “Decentralized Cooperative Aerial Surveillance using Fixed-Wing Miniature UAVs,” IEEE Proceedings: Special Issue on Multi-Robot Systems, vol. 94, no. 7, July, 2006, p. 1306-1324.
  • Wei Ren, Randal W. Beard, “Consensus Seeking in Multi-Agent Systems Using Dynamically Changing Interaction Topologies,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 50, no. 5, May, 2005, p. 655-661.
  • J. Willard Curtis, Randal W. Beard, “Satisficing: A New Approach to Constructive Nonlinear Control,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 49, no. 7, July, 2004, p. 1090-1102.
  • Randal W. Beard, Jonathan Lawton, Fred Y. Hadaegh, “A Coordination Architecture for Spacecraft Formation Control,” IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 9, no. 6, November 2001, p. 777-790.
  • Randal Beard, George Saridis, John Wen, “Suffcient Conditions for the Convergence of Galerkin Approximations to the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation,” Automatica, vol. 33, no. 12, p. 2159-2177, December, 1997.