Effects of Structural Failures on the Safe Flight Envelope of Aircraft: A database approach to ight envelope prediction and protection

Reinforcement Learning Policy Approximation by Behavior Trees: using Genetic Algoritms

Steering Algorithm of Single Gimbal Control Moment Gyroscopes: A Practical Application for Agile Spacecraft

Future space platforms, such as next-generation Earth imaging and missile-tracking satellites, require rapid rotational maneuverability. Currently, most European satellites use reaction wheels as momentum exchange device for their Attitude Control System. However, reaction wheels do not produce enough torque to meet the high slew rate...

The Role of Motion Feedback in Manual Preview Tracking Tasks

Training Effectiveness of Flight Simulators with Outside Visual Cues

Learning Depth from Single Monocular Images Using Stereo Supervisory Input

Stereo vision systems are often employed in robotics as a means for obstacle avoidance and navigation. These systems have inherent depth-sensing limitations, with significant problems in occluded and untextured regions, leading to sparse depth maps. We propose using a monocular depth estimation algorithm to tackle these problems, in a Self...

The Exploring DelFly: How to increase the indoor explored area of the DelFly Explorer by means of computationally efficient routing decisions?

Small robots, such as Micro Aerial Vehicles, form an increasingly popular field of interests in research, industry and the consumer market. The autonomous capabilities of these systems keep evolving and one of the main research goals is to reach full autonomy. However, this is often achieved at the cost of growing hardware demands. In this study...

Quadrotor Thrust Vectoring Control with Time Optimal Trajectory Planning in Constant Wind Fields

This work proposes a control strategy to follow time optimal trajectories planned to visit a given set of waypoints in windy conditions. The aerodynamic effects of quadrotors are investigated, with emphasis on blade flapping, induced and parasitic drag. An extended method to identify all the aerodynamic coefficients is developed, and their...

Intelligent Controller Selection for Aggressive Quadrotor Manoeuvring: A reinforcement learning approach

A novel intelligent controller selection method for quadrotor attitude and altitude control is presented that maintains performance in different regimes of the flight envelope. Conventional quadrotor controllers can behave insufficiently during aggressive manoeuvring, in extreme angles the quadrotor is unable to maintain height which may result...

Performance Evaluation in Obstacle Avoidance

No quantitative procedure currently exists to evaluate the obstacle avoidance capabilities of robotic applications. Such an evaluation method is needed for comparing different methods, but also to determine the operational limits of autonomous systems. This work proposes an evaluation framework which can find such limits. The framework comprises...

Evaluation of a non-linear control law for control loading devices

Simulator control loading systems are used to replicate the forces felt on the control devices. In the actual vehicle, the control system is a passive system whereas the simulator requires an actuator. The actuator imposes the forces on the control device which results in an active system. As this actuator has an inherent time delay, the energy...

Changing behavior during teleoperation by tricking the brain?: Exploring a practical application of body illusions

Teleoperation is widely used in human-hostile or otherwise inaccessible environments. However, using teleoperation to perform a task is more difficult than performing the task directly. A main factor for this is limited telepresence due to the absence or distortion of natural sensory feedback. An interesting possibility to increase telepresence...

Efficient Flight Envelope Estimation for Changed Aircraft Dynamics

This report contains a study to find faster numerical methods for Hamilton-Jacobi Isaacs partial differential equations in application to model-based flight envelope estimation. This equation can be used to estimate the flight envelope through solving a reachability problem. The goal is to update the flight envelope with this method to maintain...

Globally Optimal Multivariate Splines: Optimizing B-coefficient and vertex coordinates of simplex splines using interval analysis

In applications like model identification accurate methods for data approximation are required. Multivariate simplex B-splines form a class of nonlinear function approximators capable of approximating scattered data. Simplex B-splines are piecewise polynomials defined on a triangulation. Currently, data approximation using simplex B-splines is...

Behaviour Trees for Evolutionary Robotics: Reducing the Reality Gap

Evolutionary Robotics allows robots with limited sensors and processing to tackle complex tasks by means of sensory-motor coordination. In this paper we show the first application of the Behaviour Tree framework to a real robotic platform using the Evolutionary Robotics methodology. This framework is used to improve the intelligibility of the...

Close formation flight control - with applications in commercial aviation

Ever since the beginning of manned flight, engineers have been inspired by nature in many ways. Birds have been flying in formation for as long as man remember and military aircraft followed suit. In the light of rising fuel prices, crowded airspace and stringent environmental regulations, formation flight could just be another leap forward in...