Florida Tech Ph.D. students Thapanut Munkong and Omololu Balogun, advised by professor Debbie Carstens, won third place in the Airport Safety, Operations and Maintenance category at the recent 2025-2026 Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) University Design Competition.
Their winning poster was Autonomous Wingtip-Detection Robots for Apron Safety.
Munkong and Balogun will receive certificates and divide a $1,000 cash prize for their win, which recognized “excellence” in their project design, according to event organizers. Both began in the Ph.D. in Aviation Sciences program in the spring.
The annual event helps raise awareness of ACRP’s benefits and the importance of airports to the national airspace system infrastructure while increasing academic involvement, addressing airport operations and engaging students in the conceptualization of robust systems.
Submissions are made across four categories: Passenger Experience and Innovations in Airport Terminal Design; Airport Environmental Interactions; Airport Management and Planning; and Airport Safety, Operations, and Maintenance.
“The ACRP projects provide a way for students to learn and apply human factors methods to real-world problems that optimize safety. I’m very proud of their effort,” said Carstens, graduate program chair and professor of aviation human factors. She advised the winning team as a project over a semester in her Human Performance 1 course.
Munkong and Balogun’s proposed design introduces autonomous robots that detect and monitor aircraft wingtips from when the planes taxi-in from the runway through servicing and then pushback from the apron.
The autonomous observing allows for the establishment of real-time dynamic safety boundaries that eliminate the need for manual cone placement and human engagement for monitoring wing separation. This would reduce collision risks between aircraft, vehicles or obstacles, while removing human-heavy, judgment-reliant tasks from the operations.
The competition is funded by the Federal Aviation Administration and administered by the Airport Cooperative Research Program of the Transportation Research Board.
