USRA/CUSRA Research Internship – Summer 2022 High-Reliability Aero Design Laboratory Control for Reliability of Multirotor UAV

Application deadline: Feb 15, 2022

Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA/CUSRA)

It is planned to finance this internship with a USRA/CUSRA. A USRA/CUSRA application form will be submitted by the selected candidate by the Feb 15, 2022.

Student must be undergraduate student registered in a Bachelor degree program at Concordia University, must have completed at least 30 credits in her/his program at the time of application, and must have a cumulative GPA of 3.3 or higher.

Internship start: May 2022

Duration: 16 weeks

Internship Description

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) underwent rapid advances and increasing attention during the last years due to their potential application to activities such as logistics, delivery, surveillance, search and rescue, media coverage and elevated tasks. The UAV solutions need to be highly reliable and cost-effective to be competitive in these future markets.

The proposed project aims to devise a methodology to optimize online the control allocation of the multirotor UAVs with a physics-based estimation of the reliability.

Previous work demonstrated the possibility of optimizing the control of multi-rotor UAVs as a function of reliability [1], [2]. For efficiency and simplicity, the methodology involves a common exponential reliability model or proportional hazard model. Such a model approximates the component degradation from the applied load without reflecting the actual physical phenomena affecting the lifetime of the components, such as thermal aging and mechanical fatigue for the motor and bearings and thermal fatigue for electronics. Thus, the actual reliability could diverge from the predictions. Other works on the adaptive control of actuator lifetime [3] and design for reliability of electromechanical actuators [4] introduced physics-based health models computing the reliability of electromechanical components from the motor current or operation profile. A previous research project at the High-Reliability Aero Design Laboratory integrated a reliability model from Liscouët et al. [4] into the control scheme from Chamseddine et al. [1] and demonstrated the feasibility of merging these two researches. In the continuity of the later work, the project's objectives are:

1. Review and qualitatively compare the different control for reliability approaches from the literature.
2. Integrate the reliability models from Liscouët et al. [4] into the control scheme from Chamseddine et al. [1].
3. Compare it to the control strategies from Gokdere et al. [3] with a case study.
4.  Evaluate the integrability of the reliability models from Liscouët et al. [4] into the control scheme from Chamseddine et al. [2].
5. A technical report will conclude the project.

Qualifications & Skills

• Good knowledge in modeling and control systems.
• Background knowledge in advanced control/state space analysis.
• Interest in reliability engineering and UAV.
• Good writing skills.
• Professionalism.

How to apply

Qualified and highly motivated candidates are invited to send their application per email to jonathan.liscouet@concordia.ca with subject " Control for Reliability of Multirotor UAV" and the following elements:

• email explaining motivation and your relevant experience
• complete and up-to-date CV
• information on grades obtained (transcript or GPA or any remarks)
• a writing sample (extract of publication or report written by the candidate)

References

[1]      A. Chamseddine, I. Sadeghzadeh, Y. Zhang, D. Theilliol, and A. Khelassi, “Control allocation for a modified quadrotor helicopter based on reliability analysis,” presented at the AIAA Infotech@Aerospace 2012, Garden Grove, California, Jun. 2012. doi: 10.2514/6.2012-2511.

[2]      A. Chamseddine, D. Theilliol, I. Sadeghzadeh, Y. Zhang, and P. Weber, “Optimal reliability design for over-actuated systems based on the MIT rule: Application to an octocopter helicopter testbed,” Reliability Engineering & System Safety, vol. 132, pp. 196–206, Dec. 2014, doi: 10.1016/j.ress.2014.07.013.

[3]      L. U. Gokdere, A. Bogdanov, S. L. Chiu, K. J. Keller, and J. Vian, “Adaptive control of actuator lifetime,” in 2006 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Mar. 2006, pp. 1–11. doi: 10.1109/AERO.2006.1656096.

[4]      J. Liscouet, M. Budinger, and J.-C. Maré, “Design for reliability of electromechanical actuators,” presented at the 4th international conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Actuation Systems and Components, Toulouse, France, Jun. 2010.