Satellite Formation Flying: Development and Implementation of a GNC System

This thesis report has explored the complex field of satellite formation flying, focusing on Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) strategies for maintaining formations of multiple satellites. The research has been guided by a series of research questions aimed at improving the understanding and implementation of GNC systems for satellite...

Scalable Positioning Method for MAV Localisation using Two onboard UWB Tags

Abstract—Ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging is a very suitable method for indoor localisation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Current solutions of UWB ranging however either focus on achieving a high accuracy or focus on scalability. In this research a positioning algorithm for UAVs is presented that combines high accuracy performance with a high...

Reinforcement Learning Compensated Filter for Position and Orientation Estimation

Pose estimation provides accurate position and orientation information of the intelligent agents in real time. The accuracy of the estimation directly affects the performance of sequential tasks such as mapping, motion planning, and control. EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) is a standard theory for nonlinear pose estimation by modeling state...

Towards orientation estimation using a loosely attached IMU with a recurrent neural network

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) are getting more and more incorporated into our lives due to their improving accuracy, lower cost and smaller sizes. Applications for inertial-based orientation estimation can already be found in the field of computer vision, aerospace engineering, robotics, navigation, biomechanics, health monitoring and sports...

Sequential Estimator for Breathing and Heart Beat Frequencies Using Radar

With an LFMCW automotive radar operating at its center frequency of 77GHz, the sequential estimation of frequency and amplitude for vital signs, namely, respiration and heartbeat, are considered. The radar response of vital signs is described and analyzed. With extraction of the phase history, extended Kalman filter and particle filter are...

Aerobraking Navigation, Guidance and Control: A Comparison of State Variables Performance in Propagation

The amount of propellant required to perform deep-space maneuvers usually consists of a large percentage of the total spacecraft mass. In the early '90s, a new technique was experimented at the end of the Magellan mission, which employed the atmosphere of Mars itself, to reduce the eccentricity of the orbit over a long period of time. Said...

Vision-based Autonomous Drone racing in GPS-denied Environments

High-speed autonomous flight of Micro Air Vehicles has gained much attention in recent years. However, flight in complex GPS-denied environments still poses a serious challenge. One scenario which contains these elements is drone racing, where pilots have to fly complex tracks at high speed, often in an indoor environment. In this work we...

Performance of a Flush Airdata Sensor in a Particle Filter-Based Re-entry Navigation System

Re-entry is a term that is applied when one would like to transport some (human) payload from an orbit around a certain body towards the surface of that body. With an entry velocity of multiple kilometers per second, having the vehicle carrying this payload not smashed into pieces at the end of flight is one of the key points of re-entry. Using...

Autonomous Nevigation of Nano-satellites during Earth-Moon Transfer

Distributed-Dynamic State Estimation with SCADA and PMU

The purpose of this research is mainly to develop a distributed dynamic state estimation with PMU and SCADA as a response of the challenges in state estimation problems (accuracy, computational time, the use of new technology along with the ability to keep the existing traditional measurement). With the implementation of statistical signal...

A comparative performance evaluation of nonlinear observers for a fed-batch evaporative crystallization process

Different nonlinear observers are compared throughout this work where they are part of an NMPC framework used to control a fed-batch crystallization process . We study which observer-optimizer pair offers the best control performance while maintaining adequate computational burden so that a posterior real-time implementation is feasible. At the...