Improving the Performance of INDI Flight Control for a Quadrotor in the Ceiling Effect

As the application areas of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) keep expanding, new flight areas are encountered more often. Small UAVs, named Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), even fly in areas like sewage pipes. These areas introduce new difficulties such as aerodynamic effects caused by the ground and/or ceiling. In this paper two main contributions are...

Bayesian estimation in a bidimensional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process

The goal of this thesis is to estimate parameters in a bidimensional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, namely a diffusion model which can be found in Favetto and Samson (2010), which considers plasma and interstitium concentrations. We first look at a general linear stochastic differential equation and some properties. Then we simulate possible paths...

Estimation of Time-Varying Human Manual Control Behaviour in Preview Tracking Tasks Using a Dual Extended Kalman Filter

This research applied a Dual Extended Kalman Filter (DEKF) to time-varying human operator (HO) parameter estimation in preview tracking tasks. The preview time parameter was of particular interest, as the amount of preview can be highly variable in practical situations. The filter was centered around a linear cybernetic HO model with six...

POMDP based online parameter estimation for autonomous passenger vehicles: Researching online tyre parameter estimation performance by improving the trajectory using a POMDP algorithm.

The internal model is an important piece of the control system of an autonomous driving vehicle. In order for the model to deliver accurate predictions, a valid model structure and well chosen parameters are needed. Model parameters can be highly fluctuating or complex to predict, especially when looking into tyre ground surface interaction...

Safe Semi-Supervised Learning

Semi-supervised algorithms have been shown to possibly have a worse performance than the corresponding supervised model. This may be due to a violation of the assumptions on the data that are introduced in most classification systems. We study an approach that was previously shown to have guarantees of improvement for the LDA classifier in terms...

Jump Markov Nonlinear System Identification in Multi-Sensor Target Tracking: A Novel Approach for Multiple Model Joint Tracking and Behavior Classification

The detection of unusual behavior plays a crucial role in the prevention of illegal and harmful activities such as smuggling, piracy, arms trading, human trafficking and illegal immigration. Also for military applications, it is useful to detect anomalous behavior to provide an alert for potential threats, especially with the more recent...

Detecting central heating boiler malfunctions using smart-thermostat data

With the advent of smart thermostats like Toon®, detailed information about operation and usage of central heating boilers has become easily available. However, this information is not used in a systematic way by most companies including Eneco, and the wealth of information within is not available to the users. This has a few drawbacks. For...

Validating a Human Controller Model for Preview Tracking Tasks: Identification of the Effects of Spatial Occlusion using Eye-Tracking

This paper presents an experimental validation of a recently developed two-point human controller (HC) model for preview tracking tasks. During a human-in-the-loop experiment, subjects tracked identical target signals with zero preview, 1.5 seconds of preview, and two occlusion conditions, blocking either the 0-0.5 s, or 0.35-0.85 s region from...

Modeling of a Twisted and Coiled Polymer Muscle

A new type of polymeric artificial muscle was recently discovered. This muscle is based on twisted and coiled polymer fiber and is actuated thermally. It has interesting properties, such as low costs and high work densities. Based on fabrication methods, two variations can be considered. The autocoiled variation has a larger load capacity and...

Optimal Experiment Design for Improved Parameter Estimation in Thermo-Mechanical Feedforward Models

ASML's wafer scanners are crucial machines in the production of integrated circuits (ICs). An important performance parameter in these photo-lithographic machines is the so-called stacking precision, which is a measure for the accurate stacking of multiple layers during the photo-lithography process in the xy-plane. The stacking precision is,...

A possible new adaptive control approach for ramp metering

Due to increasing congestion there is a need for improved traffic control measures. During the Field Operational Test Integrated Management Amsterdam (Praktijkproef Amsterdam (PPA)) several control measures have been tested. One of them is ramp metering. The ramp metering algorithm, ALINEA, has been used with the "Parameterschatter" (Parameter...

Estimating ankle muscle parameters. Developing a tendon dynamics included neuromechanical muscle model and expanding the measurement protocols to improve ankle muscle parameter estimation accuracy

Current neuromechanical muscle models are unable to accurately estimate both passive and active muscle components. In this study it is investigated to increase the neuromechanical parameter estimations by using an input-rich measurement protocol and by expanding the ankle muscle model with tendon dynamics. New measurement protocols are developed...

Adaptive Incremental Backstepping Flight Control

This thesis deals with the development of Adaptive Incremental Backstepping control laws for a high-performance aircraft model (F-16), in order to make the airplane robustly seek references in roll rate and angle of attack at a constant airspeed while minimizing sideslip. An Incremental Backstepping scheme that relies on estimates of the angular...

Parameter estimation in groundwater flow models with moments of the impulse response function

Groundwater is an important natural resource which is used all over the world. For a sustainable groundwater use it is important to know how groundwater systems are affected by human interventions. There are several modelling tools that can be used to analyse the influence of interventions on a groundwater system. Time series analysis is a tool...

The evidential value of gunshot residue composition comparisons

During the discharge of a firearm gunshot residues (GSRs) escape from the barrel and other openings and may deposit on surfaces in the vicinity of the discharging firearm. The detection and identification of these GSR particles may provide valuable information in forensic investigations. A comparison, based on the elemental composition, between...

Identification of Muscle Activation at Rest

Offset muscle activation is the constant neural firing to muscles, even at rest, defining the minimum muscle contraction. Until now, the offset muscle activation has been neglected in the analysis of the dynamical behavior of joints. There is a clinical need for an assessment method to estimate the contribution of the offset muscle activation to...

Dynamic in situ calibration of an instrumented treadmill for systems identification and parameter estimation

Existing re-calibration methods for instrumented treadmills have mainly been performed when the instrumented treadmill has been in static operation i.e. the belts are not running. The effect re-calibrating during experimental operation, i.e. while the belts are running, on the ground reaction force (GRF) and the center of pressure (CoP) accuracy...

Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Linear Time-Varying Pilot-Vehicle System Parameters