Professor Chung's research focuses on distributed spacecraft systems, space autonomous systems, and aerospace robotics, and in particular, on the theory and application of complex nonlinear dynamics, control, estimation, guidance, and navigation of autonomous space and air vehicles.

Recent advances in autonomous car and drone technologies and electric airplane fans are turning a century-old dream of flying cars into reality. Our vision is to lay the groundwork for realizing fully-autonomous VTOL flying ambulances. Our current emergency responding system will immensely benefit from the improved mobility and efficiency of the proposed flying ambulances and autonomous air transportation systems deployed in congested cities, as road congestion is poised to become one of the most important societal challenges. The same technology can be used to realize electric flying cars or package-delivery drones that are aimed at short-distance travel (< 20 mi) from one location to another, such as airports, ground car pickup locations, and helipads on high-rise buildings. We lay out a research program aimed at long-term autonomous operation and large-scale multi-vehicle routing problems of Urban Aerial Mobility vehicles that can handle various uncertain weather and traffic conditions in real-time. The specific research tasks include Autonomy-Driven Vehicle Design, Flight Autonomy, and System-Level Autonomous Operation and Experimentation.