Aerobotics: Aerial Vehicles, Fluid Dynamics, and Safe Control

3 Credits.

Approaches for nonlinear control and optimization in robotics have provided a powerful framework for the control of agile and high-performance robotic systems. However, adoption of these approaches by the aerospace community has often lagged behind the robotics community due to the complexity of the underlying physical phenomena (e.g., fluid dynamics) and challenges associated with providing safety guarantees. In this course, we will explore how methods in nonlinear control and real-time optimization can be applied to aerial robots to dramatically expand the system’s operating envelope. We will also consider the challenges presented by uncertain fluid flows and explore approaches for safe control in the presence of this uncertainty, including controller adaptation, and robust and stochastic model predictive control. Finally, we will discuss relevant advanced topics such as control of partial differential equations, data-driven controller synthesis, and controller verification.