MAE Seminar – Geometric and Stochastic Nonlinear Observers: Estimating Wind from Aircraft Motion in Uncertain

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MAE Seminar – Geometric and Stochastic Nonlinear Observers: Estimating Wind from Aircraft Motion in Uncertain

Dear Undergraduate and Graduate Students, Faculty, and Staff,
You are invited! UF Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering’s Seminar Series
This is a perfect opportunity to enjoy some coffee, cookies, and captivating talks! These sessions feature amazing guest speakers, from academic trailblazers and industry movers to our very own faculty candidates showing off their expertise and fresh perspectives.
Come for the treats, stay for the engaging discussions, and connect with fellow MAE enthusiasts. Everyone is welcome!

January 28, 2025, at 12:50pm Location: MAE-A 303

Jeremy Hopwood
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Virginia Tech

Abstract
Assured performance of control laws, state estimation algorithms, and dynamic model predictions is crucial for enhancing the safety and capability of aircraft, particularly in turbulent and off-nominal conditions. A key component to the expansion of advanced air mobility is the ability to indirectly measure wind (without specialized sensors) for assimilation in path planning algorithms, numerical weather models, control systems, safety monitoring, and more. The discussion begins with an overview of model-based wind estimation to motivate the development of a symmetry-preserving reduced-order observer and its extension to stochastic differential equations. This new theory addresses limitations of prior methods by providing rigorous stability guarantees, even in uncertain environments, enabling safety-critical wind estimation.

Accurate modeling of vehicle dynamics across the full flight envelope is integral to these efforts. The seminar also highlights a new approach to deriving and identifying high-fidelity, compact, nonlinear flight dynamic models for multirotor aircraft, facilitating nonlinear control and estimation across a wide range of flight conditions. Practical implementations and performance evaluations based on flight test data underscore the performance and mathematical guarantees of these methodologies in real-world scenarios. This seminar offers insight into cutting-edge techniques for understanding and estimating aircraft dynamics in challenging environmental and operational conditions.

Biography
Jeremy Hopwood is a Ph.D. candidate in the Aerospace and Ocean Engineering department at Virginia Tech. As part of the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory, his research involves nonlinear modeling, control, and estimation of aircraft in uncertain environments using geometric and energy-based techniques. With a particular focus in flight test validation using small UAVs, he has led collaborative research teams of graduate and undergraduate students on projects sponsored by NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and industry partners. As a Walts fellow, Martin-Marietta fellow, and Virginia Space Grant Consortium fellow, his work has earned best paper awards at AIAA and VFS conferences. He is an active student member of the AIAA and the IEEE Control Systems Society, as well as an affiliate of the International Federation of Automatic Control.

MAE Faculty Host: Peter Ifju