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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Urban Cargo Transport Uav Final Design Review, Niko Giannakakos, Rafael Barreto Gutierrez, Tejas Bhavsar
Urban Cargo Transport Uav Final Design Review, Niko Giannakakos, Rafael Barreto Gutierrez, Tejas Bhavsar
Senior Design Project For Engineers
Delivery of goods to homes and offices over the last decades has seen a significant increase as more people and businesses need or want items sent directly to them. With the increase in demand, technology has also experienced a rapid growth, specifically in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Many major companies are currently researching UAVs as the future of their delivery operations. With this ever-growing demand, NASA has issued a design competition of a UAV developed for urban deliveries. This unmanned aircraft system (UAS) would need to be able to deliver small packages, in a timely manner, within …
Space Dynamics Laboratory Payload Challenge: Autonomous Water Sampling Uav, Thomas Wheeler, Zachary Williams, Joseph Stack
Space Dynamics Laboratory Payload Challenge: Autonomous Water Sampling Uav, Thomas Wheeler, Zachary Williams, Joseph Stack
Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects
The following report has been completed over the course of the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 semesters at The University of Akron by Joseph P. Stack (Aerospace Systems Engineering), Thomas J. Wheeler (Mechanical Engineering) and Zachary M. Williams (Mechanical Engineering). The purpose of this project was to create a payload system for the Akronauts Rocket Design Team to use at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) Spaceport America Cup. The Competition as a challenge that is sponsored by Space Dynamics Laboratory specifically regarding payload systems. The challenge in very open-ended and allows student to identify their own scientific experiment and …
Autonomous Quadrotor Collision Avoidance And Destination Seeking In A Gps-Denied Environment, Thomas C. Kirven
Autonomous Quadrotor Collision Avoidance And Destination Seeking In A Gps-Denied Environment, Thomas C. Kirven
Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering
This thesis presents a real-time autonomous guidance and control method for a quadrotor in a GPS-denied environment. The quadrotor autonomously seeks a destination while it avoids obstacles whose shape and position are initially unknown. We implement the obstacle avoidance and destination seeking methods using off-the-shelf sensors, including a vision-sensing camera. The vision-sensing camera detects the positions of points on the surface of obstacles. We use this obstacle position data and a potential-field method to generate velocity commands. We present a backstepping controller that uses the velocity commands to generate the quadrotor's control inputs. In indoor experiments, we demonstrate that the …
Adaptive Nonlinear Control For Autonomous Ground Vehicles, William Spencer Black
Adaptive Nonlinear Control For Autonomous Ground Vehicles, William Spencer Black
Open Access Theses
We present the background and motivation for ground vehicle autonomy, and focus on uses for space-exploration. Using a simple design example of an autonomous ground vehicle we derive the equations of motion. After providing the mathematical background for nonlinear systems and control we present two common methods for exactly linearizing nonlinear systems, feedback linearization and backstepping. We use these in combination with three adaptive control methods: model reference adaptive control, adaptive sliding mode control, and extremum-seeking model reference adaptive control. We show the performances of each combination through several simulation results. We then consider disturbances in the system, and design …
Angles-Only Navigation For Autonomous Orbital Rendezvous, David Charles Woffinden
Angles-Only Navigation For Autonomous Orbital Rendezvous, David Charles Woffinden
All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023
The proposed thesis of this dissertation has both a practical element and theoretical component which aim to answer key questions related to the use of angles-only navigation for autonomous orbital rendezvous. The first and fundamental principle to this work argues that an angles-only navigation filter can determine the relative position and orientation (pose) between two spacecraft to perform the necessary maneuvers and close proximity operations for autonomous orbital rendezvous. Second, the implementation of angles-only navigation for on-orbit applications is looked upon with skeptical eyes because of its perceived limitation of determining the relative range between two vehicles. This assumed, yet …