This thesis investigates aggressive all-attitude flight control systems. These are flight controllers capable of controlling an aircraft at any attitude and will enable the autonomous execution of manoeuvres such as high ...

This thesis describes the successful development of an autopilot for an unmanned radio controlled helicopter. It presents a non-linear helicopter model. An adaptive linearised model is derived and used to design a ...

This thesis details the development of linear control systems that allow a vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle to perform transitions between vertical and horizontal flight. Two mathematical models are ...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for power line inspection requires the definition of safe-fly zones. Transient Over-Voltages (TOVs) on the Overhead Transmission Lines (OHTLs) put the ...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In order to navigate dynamic, cluttered environments safely, fully autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are required to plan conflict-free trajectories between two states in position-time space ...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis the strategy for performing System Identification on an aircraft is presented. The ultimate aim of this document is to outline the steps required for successful aircraft parameter estimation ...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Computational Aeroelasticity is a complex research field which combines structural and aerodynamic analyses to describe a vehicle in flight. This thesis investigates the feasibility of including such ...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This project concerns motion planning for a rotary wing UAV, where vehicle controllers are already in place, and map data is readily available to a collision detection module. In broad terms, the goal ...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation presents the design and practical demonstration of a flight control system (FCS) that is capable of autonomously landing a fixed-wing, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a stationary ...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The landing phase of any helicopter is the most critical part of the whole flight envelope, particularly on a moving flight deck. The flight deck is usually located at the stern of the ship, translating ...