Brief Bio
I am the Autonomy Assurance Lead in the Office of Safety and Mission Success at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I am passionate about developing processes and computer-assisted tools that use rigorous methods to deliver, operate, and maintain dependable and trusted systems. With perseverance, energy, and an open mind, I am developing these processes and tools for autonomous systems with the ultimate goal of increasing the level of autonomy of our space assets.
I hold a Laurea degree from the University of Rome, “La Sapienza”, and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to joining JPL, I was a Technical Fellow at the Raytheon Technologies Research Center. Since 2010, my work has focused on the development of autonomous systems for the aerospace and defense industries, specializing on software architectures for agent-based systems, decision-making algorithms, multi-agent systems, and modeling and verification techniques for assurance.
Interests
- Autonomous Systems
- Model-Based Engineering
- Assurance
Education
PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciencies, 2008
University of California, Berkeley
Laurea in Electronic Engineering, 1999
Universita' "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy
Experience
Autonomy Assurance Lead
Leading the development of assurance methods and tools for autonomus systems.
Associate Adjunct Professor
Doing research in the broad area of cyber-physical systems.
Fellow, Embedded Autonomy
- Development of technology roadmaps for autonomy
- Ensuring technical excellence
- Technology transfer from research to products
- Mentoring
- Outreaching / collaborating with academic partners
- Remaining active in the research community
Associated Directory of Research, Autonomus and Intelligent Systems
Development of technical roadmaps in the specific areas of knowledge acquisition, reasoning methods, and architectural design of distributed autonomous and intelligent systems; coordinating the transition of technology to business units; proposal writing and project execution.
Staff Scientist/Engineer, Autonomus and Intelligent Systems / Design Methods
Technical lead for the development of computer automation technologies including algorithms and tools for system design, verification, reasoning, decision making, and run-time management. External and internal marketing of new concepts, proposal writing, technical project execution and development of complex software systems. Publication of research results in conference and journal papers.
Projects
*
Publications
Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
(2024).
Learning Hierarchical Control Systems for Autonomous Systems with Energy Constraints.
CDC2024.
(2023).
AACE: Automated Assurance Case Environment for Aerospace Certification.
DASC 2023.
(2023).
Computer-Aided Generation of Assurance Cases.
In SASSUR.
(2023).
Survey of Human Models for Verification of Human-Machine Systems.
Arxived.
(2023).
Leveraging Compositional Methods for Modeling and Verification of an Autonomous Taxi System.
2023 IEEE International Conference on Assured Autonomy (ICAA).
(2023).
Early Design Exploration of Space System Scenarios Using Assume-Guarantee Contracts.
2023 IEEE Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT).
(2023).
Assurance for Autonomy - JPL's past research, lessons learned, and future directions.
2023 IEEE International Conference on Assured Autonomy (ICAA).
(2022).
Analysis and Design of Uncertain Cyber-Physical Systems.
Computation-Aware Algorithmic Design for Cyber-Physical Systems.
(2022).
Hierarchical Contract-Based Synthesis for Assurance Cases.
NASA Formal Methods Symposium.
(2021).
Automated Construction of Knowledge-Bases for Safety Critical Applications: Challenges and Opportunities..
AAAI Spring Symposium: Combining Machine Learning with Knowledge Engineering.
(2021).
Requirement Specification, Analysis and Verification for Autonomous Systems.
2021 58th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC).
(2019).
An open and modular architecture for autonomous and intelligent systems.
2019 IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems (ICESS).
(2019).
Explaining AI decisions using efficient methods for learning sparse Boolean formulae.
Journal of Automated Reasoning.
(2017).
CSL4P: A contract specification language for platforms.
Systems Engineering.
(2017).
On learning sparse Boolean formulae for explaining AI decisions.
NASA Formal Methods Symposium.
(2015).
Metaphysics of planning domain descriptions.
2015 AAAI Fall Symposium Series.
(2014).
Computing Probability Distributions over a Hybrid State Space: Case Study and Practical Limitations.
(2014).
Hierarchical multi-objective planning: From mission specifications to contingency management.
2014 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA).
(2013).
A complexity metric for concurrent finite state machine based embedded software.
2013 8th IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Embedded Systems (SIES).
(2013).
Strategic planning under uncertainties via constrained Markov decision processes.
2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
(2012).
Correct-by-construction and optimal synthesis of beacon-enabled ZigBee network.
IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering.
(2012).
Methods and tools to enable the design and verification of intelligent systems.
AIAA Infotech at Aerospace.
(2012).
Stringent safety design and verification methods for VTOL unmanned aerial vehicles.
Proceedings of the American Helicopter Society 68th Annual Forum, Fort Worth, TX.
(2011).
A hierarchical wireless network architecture for building automation and control systems.
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networking and Services (ICNS).
(2011).
Model-based hierarchical optimal control design for HVAC systems.
Dynamic Systems and Control Conference.
(2011).
Optimal design of a class of hybrid systems with uncertain parameters.
2011 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference.
(2011).
Probabilistically safe vehicle control in a hostile environment.
IFAC Proceedings Volumes.
(2011).
Scalable approach to uncertainty quantification and robust design of interconnected dynamical systems.
Annual Reviews in Control.
(2011).
Stochastic analysis and design of systems.
Defense Technical Information Center #ADA552645.
(2011).
Synthesis of distributed execution platforms for cyber-physical systems with applications to high-performance buildings.
2011 IEEE/ACM Second International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems.
(2010).
A design flow for building automation and control systems.
2010 31st IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium.
(2010).
A model-based end-to-end toolchain for the probabilistic analysis of complex systems.
2010 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering.
(2010).
Analysis of Stochastic Automata Networks using copula functions.
2010 48th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton).
(2010).
Correct-by-construction design of aircraft electric power systems.
10th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference.
(2010).
Design system for managing complexity in aerospace systems.
10th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference.
(2010).
Developing design tools for uncertain systems in an industrial setting.
2010 48th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton).
(2010).
Markov modeling of stochastic hybrid systems.
2010 48th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton).
(2009).
A case study in distributed deployment of embedded software for camera networks.
2009 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition.
(2009).
A methodology for constraint-driven synthesis of on-chip communications.
IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems.
(2009).
Accurate predictive interconnect modeling for system-level design.
IEEE transactions on very large scale integration (VLSI) systems.
(2009).
Synthesis of wireless time-triggered embedded networks for networked control systems.
2009 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering.
(2008).
COSI: A framework for the design of interconnection networks.
IEEE Design & Test of Computers.
(2008).
Interconnect modeling for improved system-level design optimization.
2008 Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference.
(2008).
Outage-based rate maximization in cdma wireless networks.
IEEE GLOBECOM 2008-2008 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference.
(2008).
Synthesis of embedded networks for building automation and control.
2008 American Control Conference.
(2007).
A communication synthesis infrastructure for heterogeneous networked control systems and its application to building automation and control.
Proceedings of the 7th ACM & IEEE international conference on Embedded software.
(2007).
A next-generation design framework for platform-based design.
Conference on using hardware design and verification languages (DVCon).
(2006).
Interchange format for hybrid systems: Abstract semantics.
International Workshop on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control.
(2006).
Interchange semantics for hybrid system models.
Proc. of 5th MATHMOD.
(2006).
Languages and tools for hybrid systems design.
Foundations and Trends® in Electronic Design Automation.
(2006).
System level design paradigms: Platform-based design and communication synthesis.
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES).
(2005).
A formal approach to system level design: Metamodels and unified design environments.
Proceedings. Second ACM and IEEE International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for Co-Design, 2005. MEMOCODE'05..
(2005).
An overview of embedded system design education at Berkeley.
ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS).
(2005).
Embedded system education: a new paradigm for engineering schools?.
ACM SIGBED Review.
(2005).
Interchange formats for hybrid systems: Review and proposal.
International Workshop on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control.
(2005).
On the partitioning of syntax and semantics for hybrid systems tools.
Proceedings of the 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
(2003).
Efficient synthesis of networks on chip.
Proceedings 21st International Conference on Computer Design.
(2002).
Constraint-driven communication synthesis.
Proceedings of the 39th annual Design Automation Conference.
Contact
Work e-mail : apinto@jpl.nasa.gov
Personal e-mail: apinto@berkeley.edu
UCSC e-mail : alpinto@ucsc.edu