Gerard W. Bennett
(Advisor: Prof. Tsiotras)

will propose a master’s thesis entitled,

Covariance Steering of a Quadrotor for Autonomous Landing

On

Monday, November 26 at 12:00 p.m.
Montgomery Knight Building 317
 

Abstract
 

Environmental conditions are often a limiting factor for the autonomous landing of quadrotors. The common environmental factor that will be addressed in this research is stochastic wind. This research will address the problem of landing on moving and stationary targets in stochastic wind by applying covariance steering theory to the problem. A state feedback augmented trajectory will be determined using covariance steering and assuming full state feedback of a reduced state system. This trajectory will produce acceleration commands which are followed by a nonlinear controller. Chance constraints will be added as additional constraints to bound the probability of the altitude falling below the landing platform and to allow for the extension of the problem to landing using a camera with a limited field of view. In the extended case, the constraint is bounded by the probability of the target leaving the camera’s field of view.

Committee

• Prof. Panagiotis Tsiotras – School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor)
• Prof. Eric Feron– School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Jonathan Rogers – School of Aerospace Engineering