Publications related to Aircraft

Gas Sensing with Rotary-Wing Nano Aerial Vehicles

Harmful chemical compounds are released daily in warehouses, chemical plants and during environmental emergencies. Their uncontrolled dispersion contributes to the pollution of the atmosphere and threatens human and animal lives. When gas leaks occur, the ...

EPFL2024

Wind Defiant Morphing Drones

Dario Floreano, Charalampos Vourtsis, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, William John Stewart

Intense winds are a challenge for vertical take-off and landing drones with wings. In particular, in the hovering regime, wings are sensitive to wind currents that can be detrimental to their operational and energetic performances. Tail-sitters are particu ...

2023

To tread or not to tread: comparison between water treading and conventional flapping wing kinematics

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke, Swathi Badala Krishna

Hovering insects are limited by their physiology and need to rotate their wings at the end of each back-and-forth motion to keep the wing's leading edge ahead of its trailing edge. The wing rotation at the end of each half-stroke pushes the leading edge vo ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Real-Time Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Fast Mechatronic Systems

Petr Listov

This thesis presents an efficient and extensible numerical software framework for real-time model-based control. We are motivated by complex and challenging mechatronic applications spanning from flight control of fixed-wing aircraft and thrust vector cont ...

EPFL2022

Aeroelastic characterisation of a bio-inspired flapping membrane wing

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke, Esra Uksul, Jules Ange Philippe Richeux

Natural fliers like bats exploit the complex fluid-structure interaction between their flexible membrane wings and the air with great ease. Yet, replicating and scaling the balance between the structural and fluid-dynamical parameters of unsteady membrane ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Flying in Private Mode: Understanding and Improving the Privacy ICAO Address Program

Guillaume Michel Le Bars

Location privacy of aircraft has recently gained attention as air traffic management was modernized using novel surveillance technologies. Business aviation circles and various military and government entities voiced serious concerns about automated and ub ...

AMER INST AERONAUTICS ASTRONAUTICS2021

Stability and Unbalance Analysis of Rigid Rotors Supported by Spiral Groove Bearings: Comparison of Different Approaches

Jürg Alexander Schiffmann, Elia Iseli

The dynamic behavior of spiral-grooved gas bearing supported four degrees-of-freedom (DOF) rotors is investigated by means of linearized bearing force coefficients and full time-integrated transient analysis. The transient method consists of a state-space ...

2021

Flowfield Reconstruction Method Using Artificial Neural Network

Jan Sickmann Hesthaven

Multi-dimensional aerodynamic database development has become more and more impor- tant for the design, control and guidance of modern aircrafts. In order to relieve the curse of the dimensionality, we propose a novel flow field reconstruction method based ...

2018

A Versatile Method for Ice Particle Habit Classification Using Airborne Imaging Probe Data

Alexis Berne, Christophe Praz

A versatile method to automatically classify ice particle habit from various airborne optical array probes is presented. The classification is achieved using a multinomial logistic regression model. For each airborne probe, the model determines the particl ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2018

A Multilevel Monte Carlo Evolutionary Algorithm for Robust Aerodynamic Shape Design

Fabio Nobile, Pénélope Leyland, Michele Pisaroni

The majority of problems in aircraft production and operation require decisions made in the presence of uncertainty. For this reason aerodynamic designs obtained with traditional deterministic optimization techniques seeking only optimality in a specific s ...

2017

Foldable aircraft with protective cage for transportation and transportability

Dario Floreano, Stefano Mintchev, Przemyslaw Mariusz Kornatowski

An aerial vehicle, configured to transport cargo, and including a propulsion system and a foldable cage is described. The foldable cage is substantially linear while in a folded configuration, and substantially circular while in a deployed configuration. M ...

2017

Multi Level Monte Carlo Methods for Uncertainty Quantification and Robust Design Optimization in Aerodynamics

Michele Pisaroni

The vast majority of problems that arise in aircraft production and operation require decisions to be made in the presence of uncertainty. An effective and accurate quantification and control of the level of uncertainty introduced in the design phase and d ...

EPFL2017

Adaptable Imaging Package for Remote Vehicles

David Andrew Barry, Jean-Luc Liardon

An easy-to-customize, low-cost solution for remote imagery is described. The system, denoted ImPROV (Imaging Package for Remote Vehicles), supports multiple cameras, live streaming, long-range encrypted communication using mobile networks, positioning and ...

2017

Crosswind Kite Control - A Benchmark Problem for Advanced Control and Dynamic Optimization

Dominique Bonvin, Grégory François, Sean Costello

This article presents a kite control and optimization problem intended as a benchmark problem for advanced control and optimization. We provide an entry point to this exciting renewable energy system for researchers in control and optimization methods look ...

Wiley-Blackwell2017

On Designing an Active Tail for Legged Robots: Simplifying Control via Decoupling of Control Objectives

Auke Ijspeert, Massimo Vespignani, Mostafa Ajallooeian, Peter Eckert, Steve Walter Shue Heim

This work explores the possible roles of active tails for steady-state legged-locomotion. A series of simple models are proposed which capture the dynamics of an idealized running system with an active tail. The models suggest that the control objectives o ...

Emerald Group Publishing Ltd2016

On Designing An Active Tail For Body-Pitch Control In Legged Robots Via Decoupling Of Control Objectives

Auke Ijspeert, Massimo Vespignani, Mostafa Ajallooeian, Peter Eckert, Steve Walter Shue Heim

This work explores the use of active tails for steady-state legged-locomotion. Simple models are proposed which capture the dynamics of an idealized running system with an active tail. Analysis suggests that the control objectives of injecting energy into ...

World Scientific Publ Co Pte Ltd2016

Experimental characterization of a five blade tubular propeller turbine for pipe inline installation

Anton Schleiss, Mário Jorge Rodrigues Pereira Da Franca, Vlad Hasmatuchi, Irene Almeida Samora, Cécile Münch-Alligné

The interest in micro-hydropower in existing infrastructure is increasing since this is a technology with low environmental impacts and potential for energy recovery in different types of installation. The technologies available for these schemes are still ...

Elsevier2016

A new ring‐shaped wind tunnel facility to study wind‐packing of snow

Michael Lehning, Christian Gabriel Sommer, Charles Fierz

A new wind tunnel was designed and built at SLF. The facility is ring-shaped to simulate an infinite fetch. This is important for experiments where the observed processes have a slow time scale (minutes to hours). The wind tunnel was developed to study the ...

University de Genève2016

Real-Time Optimization via Directional Modifier Adaptation, with Application to Kite Control

Sean Costello

The steady advance of computational methods makes model-based optimization an increasingly attractive method for process improvement. Unfortunately, the available models are often inaccurate. The traditional remedy is to update the model parameters, but th ...

EPFL2015

Photogrammetric Mission Planner for RPAS

Jan Skaloud, Martin Rehak, Florian Gandor

This paper presents a development of an open-source flight planning tool for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) that is dedicated to high-precision photogrammetric mapping. This tool contains planning functions that are usually available in professio ...

2015