CONTROL RESEARCH
Academic research project
Completion as employed researcher
Technion — Israel Institute of Technology
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TASKS
Simulation infrastructure
Guidance and control design
Procedural terrain generation
Statistical analysis
GUI for simulation and analysis tools
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ADVISOR
Assoc. Prof. Moshe Idan
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STATUS
Completed in 2020
While studying for my BSc degree in Aerospace Engineering at the Technion, Israel, I conducted a year-long academic research project aiming to autonomously maintain a drone's height above ground using only laser rangefinders (LRFs). This project continued past my graduation, as a paid researcher, up to its completion with good results.
The goal of this project was not only to maintain a given height above ground while also navigating horizontally along a specified path, but to do so with very limited data; each LRF can only provide the position of a single point on the ground relative to the drone at any given time. Using a small number of LRFs allows only a very partial estimation of the ground, with significant inherent errors.
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During the course of the research, I defined and simulated the drone's dynamic model, designed controllers to stabilize and command it, incorporated custom Perlin noise terrain generation, implemented raycasting against it to simulate LRF measurements, integrated a guidance algorithm relying on these measurements, and presented a statistical analysis of the system's performance. This simulation and analysis infrastructure was wrapped in graphical applications for ease of use, and a simulation animation tool was built as a side project.
Example simulation results. The black dashed line marks the desired path, curving horizontally along a preset 2D path; and vertically — to match the topography of the ground below. The magenta dotted line denotes the drone's current estimation of the desired path — the preset 2D path projected onto the ground model, calculated in real time using the LRF measurements and offset to the desired height. A portion of this model is visualized by the translucent grid, which can be seen approximating the ground in the LRF measurement points' vicinity.
