Flying and Ground Robot Collaboration for Camera-based Search and Rescue

Search and Rescue (SaR) missions present challenges due to the complexity of the disaster scenarios. Most life losses and injuries occur in developing countries. Robotics has become indispensable for rapidly locating disaster victims. Combining flying and ground robots more effectively serves this purpose due to their complementary features. To...

Online State Estimators for Lithium Ion Batteries: Development of a multi-physics based online State of health estimator for Lithium Ion batteries

Batteries play a crucial role in powering contemporary devices and systems, ranging from smartphones and electric vehicles to renewable energy storage. With the increasing demand for more efficient and reliable battery technologies, the need for accurate monitoring and assessment of battery condition and performance has also grown. Online...

Comparative Evaluation of Invariant and Multiplicative EKF for 3D Pose Estimation with IMU Sensors and GPS or Landmark Measurements

This thesis investigates the performance of the invariant extended Kalman filter (IEKF) compared to the multiplicative extended Kalman filter (MEKF) in the context of nonlinear state estimation on matrix Lie groups. The IEKF, a relatively recent variant of the EKF, is particularly suitable for systems with group-affine process models and...

Omnidirectional Monocular Collision Avoidance Onboard a Quadrotor

Meter Placement for State Estimation in distribution networks

With the increasing environmental concerns, the world is moving towards rapid decarbonization, and to meet the growing energy demand, more renewable energy sources like solar, Wind are getting added to the existing Distribution grid. The addition of new loads like Electric vehicles (EV), Heat pumps, etc. is putting additional pressure on the...

Input and state estimation for compliant motion stages: Estimating modal contribution for guidance flexures

To improve Active Vibration control methods like Independent Modal Space Control (IMSC), an estimate of the modal contribution of vibrational eigenmodes of compliant structures is required. In this work, three Recursive Bayesian input and state estimation algorithms previously introduced in civil engineering are evaluated for use on on high-tech...

Deep Statistical Solver for Distribution System State Estimation

Whereas in the past, Distribution Systems played a passive role in connecting customers to electricity, Distribution System Operators (DSOs) will have to take in the future a more active role in monitoring and regulating the network to deal with the new behaviors and dynamics of the system brought by the energy transition. State Estimation, a...

Development of a 2D Lidar SLAM algorithm for localization on the building construction site

In order to improve the autonomy of construction robots, a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) solution is needed that localizes the robot using solely on-board sensing with sub-5 mm accuracy. As pointed out by the results of the Hilti SLAM Challenge, the state-of-the-art in SLAM currently does not offer a solution that comes close to...

State Estimation in Medium Voltage Distribution Networks using Pseudo Measurements

Transition from fossil fuels to sustainable sources of energy like wind and solar is the need of the hour. All over the globe, plans are in motion to achieve this goal. This implies addition of new elements to the grid in the form of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). These affect the working of distribution grids and to ensure reliable as...

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...

Brain inspired state and input observer for a drone in wind conditions

The free energy principle is a recent theory that originates from the neuroscience. It provides a unified framework that combines action perception and learning in the human brain. This research aims to implement the perception aspect of the free energy principle into robotics. This is achieved via the dynamic expectation maximisation (DEM)...

State Estimation in Medium Voltage Distribution Networks

Transition from fossil fuels to sustainable sources of energy like wind and solar is the need of the hour. All over the globe, plans are in motion to achieve this goal. This implies addition of new elements to the grid in the form of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). These affect the working of distribution grids and to ensure reliable as...

Modelling and Control of Lateral Wind Turbine Tower Dynamics

In recent years wind turbines have become increasingly large to increase energy yield and cost-effectiveness. This has led to taller turbine towers, subjected to larger loads. As a result, Lagerwey turbines experience lateral tower vibrations at different resonance frequencies. These vibrations result in rotor speed measurement disturbances due...

An IMU tracking algorithm for 3D motion reconstruction using OpenSim dynamical models: Implementation on a robot manipulator

Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)-based motion capture has gained interest over the years due to its potential to measure human movement in the clinic and on the sports field at low cost. Still, IMU-based motion reconstruction remains a challenging task as these IMU measurements are corrupted by noise and bias. There have been many filtering and...

Linear state estimation method for distribution grids

The recent trend for monitoring and control of the distribution networks requires methods capable to calculate the network’s operating conditions. One way to monitor the distribution network is by state estimation. Although previously this method was established only for the transmission networks, its use has begun to also make sense for the...

Detection of Tip-Sample Interaction in Atomic Force Microscopy: Improving the Image Resolution

Currently used imaging methods in Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) including the use of a Lock-In Amplifier or a Phase-Locked Loop, are suboptimal. In this report, the image resolution in AFM is improved by detecting the tip-sample interaction using complete measurements of the input of the cantilever and its measured deflection. Two methods are...

Open Aircraft Performance Modeling: Based on an Analysis of Aircraft Surveillance Data

A large number of stakeholders exist in the modern air traffic management ecosystem. Air transportation studies benefit from collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and findings between these different players. However, not all parties have equal access to information. Due to the lack of open-source tools and models, it is not always possible...

State Estimation for Nanosatellite-Class Reaction Wheels

In this MSc. thesis, state estimation for a nanosatellite-class reaction wheel has been investigated. Two LPV observers, using different sensor information, have been synthesized. The performance of the designed observers has been evaluated using a detailed simulation of the reaction wheel (including disturbances that occur during the reaction...