/ 12 / WHAT IF WE RELINQUISH A LITTLE BIT OF CONTROL TO SAVE ENERGY AND FLY FURTHER? Deeksha Kota and RohanDhansoia, MAE students majoring in Aerospace Systems and Controls, have been working on conserving a drone’s energy by loosening its autopilot stabilization setpoint requirements. The Mermoz Project’s (see page 4) motivated their undertaking since all Mermoz subsystems are under investigation regarding energy savings due to the mission’s challenging distance. While crossing the ocean, random and chaotic atmospheric disturbances could either increase or decrease the energetic state of the aircraft. Conventional autopilot systems will correct the aircraft’s configuration to a predefined nominal flight condition by injecting or rejecting the deficit or surplus of energy. On the other hand, the students propose not to reject excesses of power outright, but instead allow the aircraft to return to its nominal condition more slowly. In turn, subsequent energy-drawing disturbances could have a lower impact on the overall energy balance, thus increasing the aircraft’s range in the presence of perturbations. Deeksha and Rohan worked together during two semesters with clearly defined missions. Rohan focused on control laws and energy aspects through a simulator he designed himself. The resulting software simulated standard drone stabilization control algorithms and the physics of an aircraft. As for Deeksha, she focused on the avionics integration of a flying prototype for flight-testing their findings. She integrated an entire drone at ISAE-SUPAERO’s Fablab, the InnovSpace. In addition, she designed flight test protocols and checklists conforming to French airspace regulations andmodified the open-source autopilot code to implement their ideas and flighttesting requirements. All code generated during her work can be downloaded online, and drone enthusiasts worldwide can use it for free through her GitHub page. This project had an outstanding balance between what they learned in theory in class and practical, real-world experiments. It gave them a deeper understanding of flight control systems and the process of conducting flight campaigns. After the project, Deeksha joined as an intern a team responsible for generating optimized test flight points to minimize flight test hours through machine learning techniques. Similarly, Rohan joined a group that designs and validates Airbus auto-flight systems. An Energy-Aware Study of the PX4 Total Energy Control System (TECS) Controller for Long-Range Flight STUDENT PROJECTS This project was conducted at the IONLAB @ ISAESUPAERO with the support of the DCAS/DISC departments and InnovSpace. For more information on IONLAB’s projects, please visit http:/ www.ionlab.fr. The plane was named «AMARELINHO» by the team, which in Portuguese means «the little yellow one!» 4
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