Abstract

Adaptive control is seeing some use in the aerospace domain but has been limited to a small set of systems such as air-to-ground missiles, and small UAS. Two of the limiting assumptions of adaptive control that contribute to this limitation of use are that the parameters in the system must only change relatively slowly, and that the parameters all change at roughly the same speed. These are difficult to successfully address in adaptive control in a rigorous theoretical manner and have challenged the control community for decades. This seminar presents a new and novel approach for adaptive control of multiple time-scale systems called Kontrol of Adaptive Multiple Time-Scale Systems (KAMS). KAMS is inspired by the theoretical foundations of nonlinear time-scale control theory, and permits adaptive control to not only adapt to different speeds of parameter changes in a vehicle model, but to also account for different speeds due to using a mix of slow and fast actuators. KAMS has the potential to enable air and space vehicles with new operational capabilities, and has been used to design controllers for orbital transfers, rotorcraft UAS, fixed-wing UAS, and inlet unstart of hypersonic flight vehicles

Speaker

Dr. John Valasek

John Valasek is Professor and Drs. L. Diane '88 and John E. Hurtado '91 Professor of aerospace engineering, and Director of the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory (https://vscl.tamu.edu) at Texas A&M University (TAMU). He has been conducting autonomy and flight controls research of Manned and Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) in both Industry and Academia for 40 years, first as a Flight Control Engineer for the Northrop Corporation, Aircraft Division. At TAMU since 1997, John holds two patents and is co-author/editor of four books, including Nonlinear Multiple Time Scale Systems in Standard and Non-Standard Forms: Analysis and Control, (SIAM, 2014). John is a Fellow of AIAA and recipient of the 2015 ASEE/AIAA John Leeland Atwood Award for national outstanding aerospace educator. John earned the B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from Cal Poly, Pomona in 1986 and the M.S. degree with honors and the Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas, in 1990 and 1995 respectively.