Bio-inspired sensing and control for aerial vehicles PhD or MSc by Research

It is well known that birds, bats, insects and fishes can sense environmental flows to perform agile and robust motion. They are also using information about external flows to harvest energy from the environment. The research project at Cranfield is directed towards employing bio-inspired technologies to develop a novel aerial platform and improve existing ones.

Due to recent development in the miniaturization of sensors, actuators, and electronics, the aeroelastic parameters, such as velocity, pressure, and deformations, can be measured and controlled directly in flight. Together with significant capabilities to handle big data sets provided by Artificial Intelligent (AI) technologies this stimulates the research toward a bio-inspired sensing and control enabling a system to adapt to the environment and thus to demonstrate higher performance.

New technologies available in sensing, actuation, materials, electronics as well in AI require re-thinking of collecting, processing data and control approaches to enable bio-inspired flight. New strategies should utilise novel capabilities and tackle challenges arising with a new generation of technologies, improving the system performance. An array of multi-modal (pressure, acceleration) sensors generates big data that should be handled online via AI techniques to observe the time-spacial flow patterns and structural loads; new materials and new micro actuators provide the distributed actions along the wing to improve the system performance.

This project envisages a re-thinking of the sensing paradigm to reflect recent technology advances and shifting it towards bio-inspired methods. These will be achieved via development of distributed multi-modality measurements of external loads acting on the wing and proposing optimal sensor configuration. The control paradigm utilizing distributed multi-modality data to produce distributed control inputs to optimise flow-structure interaction will be designed.

The proposed method is multidisciplinary and lies in the intersection of different domains, namely, aerodynamics, AI, multi-modal distributed sensing, sensor fusion, reduced order modelling, and distributed control.

Cranfield is an exclusively postgraduate university that is a global leader for education and transformational research in technology and management.

Cranfield University has been ranked amongst the world’s top universities in the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject.

In the subject area ‘Engineering – Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing’ Cranfield has been ranked 27th in the world, climbing 18 places from last year’s ranking and attaining top scores in Employer and Academic Reputation.

This PhD will be hosted by the Centre for Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems. The Centre for Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems is one of the world’s largest centres of postgraduate education and research, with over 200 MSc and PhD students.

The Centre for Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems at Cranfield has a leading reputation in autonomous and space systems, established with over 15 years of research in this field. We cover all types of autonomous systems including airborne, ground and marine as well as autonomous space exploration.

We are renowned for being a leading European centre for postgraduate teaching and research in autonomous and cyber-physical systems with approximately 500 alumni members around the world working in the aerospace industry. Over the last two decades we have developed a significant body of research and its applications in autonomous systems.