Drones Flight Envelope Protection Using Reference Governors

Speaker

Laurent Burlion
Assistant Professor, Rutgers University

Title

"Drones Flight Envelope Protection Using Reference Governors"

Abstract

Although often neglected in the design of flight control laws, nonlinearities must be taken into account either to get the best performance or to enlarge the flight envelope of controlled aerospace systems. Indeed, every system has a limited control authority and is subject to some safety constraints which impose limits on certain variables. In this talk, we will present the reference governor technique that monitors and modifies, when necessary, the nominal closed-loop system to ensure that constraints are satisfied. We will discuss some new results and apply them to quadrotor drones flying at high speed or having a faulty propeller. 

About Speaker

Professor Laurent Burlion received the Ph.D. from the University of Paris Saclay in 2007. From 2010-2018, he was a Scientific Researcher with the French Aerospace Lab, working with companies and laboratories. For example, he led a multi-disciplinary project on “automatic vision-based emergency landing of a commercial aircraft” in close collaboration with Airbus. This project led to a patented solution that was pushed for industrialization. In 2019, he joined Rutgers University, NJ, USA, as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Burlion is a member of the IFAC TC on Aerospace and the IEEE-CSS TC on Aerospace Controls. He is an associate editor of Control Engineering Practice. His research interests are in control theory for systems with state and control constraints and in control applications to aerospace systems.