Department of Aerospace, Power and Sensors
Fully Funded PHD Studentship
Robust and autonomous satellites formation flying
Future trend in space science missions is the usage of several spacecraft flying in formation, in order to achieve higher accuracy in Earth and extra solar planetary observations, or higher region coverage when monitoring science data. A ground-based command and control system for relative spacecraft positioning would be very complex and may not provide sufficiently rapid corrective control commands. Thus, the overall focus of this work is to significantly increase the onboard autonomy of the future spacecraft, thereby reducing the ground support required.
As part of our collaborative research work with EADS Astrium, we wish to recruit a research student for a PhD study on robust and autonomous satellites formation flying. The main objective of the proposed research project is to study the formation flying of space vehicles from different perspectives such as navigation, control and fault diagnosis and recovery using robust estimation and control theory. We will investigate decentralized information fusion architecture to enhance the quality of relative pose estimation of the space vehicles.
This estimation will be used as basis to develop a model based fault diagnosis and recovery module to make up for any occurs of faults, which will degenerate the performance of the formation flying setup. In addition and using robust control theory, we will be able to achieve, a precise decentralized control & computation for the fleet of space vehicles, formation maneuvers assuring the formation flying mission performance, with being robust to navigation uncertainties and linked to the fault diagnosis module. The project will be carried out in close collaboration with our industrial partner and the resulting interactions will provide an exceptionally rich research environment. In addition to simulation validation, this project entails 30% real time simulations and possibly experiments to validate proposed algorithms.
Entry Requirements:
For this research studentship, we are seeking a talented graduate, having (or be expected to obtain) at least an upper second class honours degree (first class honours preferred), MSc or equivalent in engineering or computer science. Good mathematical background and experience of signal processing, control systems, data fusion and real time systems would be most desirable.
Eligibility:
We are looking for a UK national student (or a European resident in the UK for three years). The studentship is for three years and provides payment of tuition fees at the UK/EU rate plus a £17,000 per annum (normally tax free) contribution to living expenses.
Applicants should make initial enquiries or send a CV with contact details of two referees to: Dr Aouf n.aouf@cranfield.ac.uk
Start Date: As soon as Possible or by October 2007
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