{
  "route": {
    "id": "defense",
    "label": "Defense / Autonomy",
    "short": "DEF",
    "summary": "Tracking, radar image formation, and GPS-denied navigation.",
    "projects": [
      "track-fusion",
      "sar-focus",
      "vio-nav"
    ]
  },
  "owner": {
    "name": "Aaryan Patel",
    "email": "aaryansp26@gmail.com",
    "github": "https://github.com/asp53826",
    "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaryanpatelsystems/",
    "site": "https://asp53826.github.io",
    "role": "Systems and ML Infrastructure Engineer",
    "education": "Computer Science undergraduate at the University of Georgia",
    "work": "Automation and analytics at MP Equipment"
  },
  "thesis": "I build systems that survive faults, bad data, and dishonest benchmarks.",
  "projects": [
    {
      "id": "track-fusion",
      "name": "track-fusion",
      "track": "defense",
      "language": "Python",
      "tagline": "IMM, JPDA, track scoring, and OSPA from the filter up.",
      "problem": "Tracking fails across estimation, association, and track existence; RMSE alone hides cardinality failure.",
      "mechanism": "IMM motion bank, exact JPDA enumeration with bounded fallback, Wald track scoring, and OSPA decomposition.",
      "attack": "Turn-rate sweeps, crossing targets, clutter, and paired association comparisons.",
      "metric": "47%",
      "metricLabel": "localization error reduction",
      "proof": "67 tests; IMM coverage rises from 0.893 to 0.960, while the published sweep shows where the bank loses.",
      "limitation": "The useful IMM band is 3-6 degrees per second; at 0 and 12 degrees per second the configured bank loses.",
      "command": "git clone https://github.com/asp53826/track-fusion && cd track-fusion && python -m pip install -e '.[dev]' && python -m pytest -q",
      "repo": "https://github.com/asp53826/track-fusion",
      "methods": [
        "OSPA",
        "paired seeds",
        "parameter sweep"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "sar-focus",
      "name": "sar-focus",
      "track": "defense",
      "language": "Python",
      "tagline": "Image formation checked against analytic resolution and sidelobe theory.",
      "problem": "A plausible radar image can still have the wrong resolution or impossible sidelobes.",
      "mechanism": "LFM pulse compression, time-domain backprojection, phase-gradient autofocus, and impulse-response analysis.",
      "attack": "Independent bandwidth/aperture sweeps and theory checks for resolution and PSLR.",
      "metric": "<0.5%",
      "metricLabel": "resolution error vs theory",
      "proof": "27 tests; the theory oracle exposed interpolation that produced physically impossible sidelobes.",
      "limitation": "Synthetic phase history with idealized propagation and no measured sensor calibration errors.",
      "command": "git clone https://github.com/asp53826/sar-focus && cd sar-focus && python -m pip install -e '.[dev]' && python -m pytest -q",
      "repo": "https://github.com/asp53826/sar-focus",
      "methods": [
        "analytic theory",
        "double dissociation",
        "impulse response"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "vio-nav",
      "name": "vio-nav",
      "track": "defense",
      "language": "Python",
      "tagline": "MSCKF visual-inertial odometry built from the Lie algebra up.",
      "problem": "IMU bias integrates into unbounded position drift while a monocular camera cannot observe scale alone.",
      "mechanism": "SO(3) preintegration, sliding camera-state window, null-space feature marginalization, and ATE/RPE evaluation.",
      "attack": "Duration sweeps, hover/circle/figure-eight motion, parallax rejection, and dead-reckoning baseline.",
      "metric": "51.9x",
      "metricLabel": "lower drift at 40 seconds",
      "proof": "37 tests; MSCKF stays near four centimeters while dead reckoning reaches 2.106 meters.",
      "limitation": "At five seconds VIO is worse than inertial-only, and hover makes it 13x worse because depth is unobservable.",
      "command": "git clone https://github.com/asp53826/vio-nav && cd vio-nav && python -m pip install -e '.[dev]' && python -m pytest -q",
      "repo": "https://github.com/asp53826/vio-nav",
      "methods": [
        "ground-truth trajectory",
        "motion sweep",
        "ATE and RPE"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "generated": "2026-07-31"
}