Database-driven online safe flight envelope prediction and protection for enhanced aircraft fault tolerance

Among all the contributors to fatal accidents, in-flight loss of control (LOC-I) remains one of the largest categories, as indicated by statistics of investigations into past civil aircraft accidents. In flight LOC generally refers to accidents in which the flight crew was unable to maintain control of the aircraft in flight, resulting in an...

Incremental nonlinear control of hydraulic parallel robots: An application to the SIMONA research simulator

In advanced robotic applications such as robotic locomotion, vehicle and flight simulators, and material test devices, there are higher requirements on stiffness, robustness and power ability for the mechanical structure and the actuator. Hence, it is common for such applications to use parallel manipulators and hydraulic actuators, due to their...

An Empirical Approach to Reinforcement Learning for Micro Aerial Vehicles

The use of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) in practical applications, to solve real-world problems, is growing in demand as the technology becomes more widely known and accessible. Proposed applications already span a wide berth of fields like military, search and rescue, ecology, artificial pollinators, and more. As compared to larger Unmanned...

Online reinforcement learning control for aerospace systems

Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are relatively new in the field of aerospace guidance, navigation, and control. This dissertation aims to exploit RL methods to improve the autonomy and online learning of aerospace systems with respect to the a priori unknown system and environment, dynamical uncertainties, and partial observability. In the...