Point Cloud Feature Extraction for Trajectory Optimization

The railway industry is constantly growing to meet the demand of society for stable, accessible and sustainable transportation. With this growth, the need for the railway to be reliable increases, requiring frequent surveying and maintenance. Fugro's RILA (Rail Infrastructure aLignment Acquisition) mobile mapping system contributes by making the...

Closed-loop guidance for micro launchers: Improvement to robustness and failure tolerance

The startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) is developing the RFA ONE orbital launch vehicle. A significant hurdle for its closed-loop guidance is the need to fully deplete the third stage for insertion during the first flight, which results in lengthy burn-arcs and complexity not managed properly by traditional guidance algorithms. Additionally,...

Mission Design for Flyback Boosters: Towards Reusable Launch Vehicles

The development of reusable launch vehicles in space exploration is a significant paradigm shift in the aerospace industry. Among numerous approaches to fully reusable launchers, a flyback booster, complemented by the emerging importance of spaceplanes, stands out as a viable solution. To outweigh the drawbacks associated with the cost, a...

Low-thrust Trajectory Optimization to Earth’s Mini-Moons: A Case Study of 2006 RH120

Temporarily Captured Orbiters (TCOs) - also known as Earth’s mini-moons – are meter-size asteroid fragments temporarily trapped in the Earth-Moon system. TCOs are challenging to identify due to their small size and high speed. While only two TCOs have been confirmed so far, studies suggest a constant presence of at least one TCO at any given...

Differential dynamic programming applied to interplanetary solar-sail trajectory optimization

Recent studies have shown the feasibility of differential dynamic programming (DDP) in optimizing Earth-centered solar-sail trajectories. In order to further demonstrate the ability of DDP in the optimization of solar-sail trajectories, this work investigates the performance of DDP for optimizing interplanetary solar-sail trajectories. The...

Optimal Skateboard Geometry for Maximizing Ollie Height: a Multi-Phase Direct Collocation Optimization Study

Skateboarding involves a human controlling a four wheeled vehicle that is steered by tilting the standing surface. The riding mechanics of skateboarding have been well reported [2, 3]. The sport also includes aerial maneuvers such as jumping of stairs, flying off ramps and flipping and rotating the skateboard. The most basic aerial trick is...

A feasibility study on the recovery of Electron's first stage using a vertical landing approach

The small satellite market is rapidly growing and becomes more competitive by the day. In order to reduce launch costs, the concept of reusable launch vehicles wins popularity. Only few companies have managed to successfully recover and re-use their launch vehicle, of which SpaceX is the only one using a powered descent technique. This study...

Many-revolution Earth-centred solar-sail trajectory optimisation using differential dynamic programming

This thesis demonstrates the usability of differential dynamic programming (DDP) to obtain, for the first time, globally optimal Earth-centred solar-sail trajectories. To this end, DDP is combined with a global optimisation heuristic, monotonic basin hopping. The dynamical model is implemented as a two-body problem, augmented with an ideal solar...

Multi-Objective Optimization of Departure Trajectories at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport: Contributing to Sustainability in Air Transport by Creating Aircraft Type Dependent Departure Trajectories Optimized for Fuel Consumption and Noise Abatement

Due to the growing demand in air transport, measures need to be taken to reduce the impact of noise and emissions on local communities and the environment. The generic nature of current departure procedures leaves room for improvement in the form of aircraft type dependent departure trajectories. In this study a trajectory optimization model is...

Optimal Trajectories in the Earth-Moon CR3BP system

The aim of this investigation is to improve the first stage of mission analysis on trajectories in the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem (CR3BP). This will be achieved by developing a versatile tool that can optimize any transfer in the CR3BP in terms of ΔV and time of flight. Hence, the output will not be<br/>a single solution, but a...

Capacity-based Arrival Sequencing and Trajectory Optimization for Continuous Descent Operations

Due to the rapid growth of air traffic and the corresponding increase in demanded landing capacity of airports, much research has been done on arrival scheduling and approach trajectory optimization aiming to not only maximize the effective runway throughput of an airports runway system but also significantly reduce fuel consumption. This thesis...

Trajectory Optimization For Hybrid Walking-Driving Motions On Wheeled Quadrupedal Robots

Wheeled-legged (hybrid) robots have the potential for highly agile and versatile locomotion in any real-world application requiring rapid, long-distance mobility skills on challenging terrain. The ability to walk and drive simultaneously is an attractive feature of these hybrid systems, but is unexplored in literature. This thesis work presents...

Optimization of Solar Sailcraft Trajectory for a Comet Sample Return Mission

Comets, the sporadic visitors from the outer edges of the Solar System, are considered to hold the key for understanding the formation of planets and the origin of life on Earth. Having spent the majority of time away from the radiative environment of the inner Solar System, the chemistry of the comets has remained unaltered, making them the...

Trajectory Optimization for Autonomous Navigation in Dynamic Environments

Motion planning for Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGVs) in dynamic environments is an extensively studied and complex problem. State of the art methods provide approximate solutions that make conservative assumptions to provide safety and feasibility. We aim to outperform current methods by following a trajectory optimization-based approach,...

A Hybrid Optimal Control Approach to Multi-Aircraft Formation Flying

A Hybrid Optimal Control (HOC) framework which can be used in conjunction with existing optimal control software is presented. By using hybrid optimal control theory, trajectory optimization problems for systems that are both discrete time and continuous time from a mathematical perspective can be solved. A case study on multi-aircraft formation...