The Autonomous Systems Lab of EPFL is developing, within the framework of an ESA program, an ultra-lightweight solar autonomous model airplane called Sky-Sailor with embedded navigation and control systems. The main goal of this project is to jointly undertake research on navigation, control of the plane and also work on the design of the structure, the energy generation system. The airplane wi...

Common uses of fuzzy logic control today are found in relatively simple applications in products. These applications only scratch the surface of the potential of fuzzy logic control in complex mechatronic systems. In order to demonstrate the utility of fuzzy logic in complex device control, a fuzzy logic fly-by-wire system has been developed for a model airplane. The model airplane is a complex...

The accelerated growth in aircraft industries desire effectual schemes, programs, innovative designs of advanced systems and facilities to accomplish the augmenting need for home-free air transportation. In this paper, a contemporary conceptual design of a cambered airfoil has been proposed in order to providing augmented effective lift force relative to the airplane, and to eliminating drawbac...

Aerodynamic design optimization of an airfoil for the Mars exploration airplane has been demonstrated by using an evolutionary algorithm. The adaptive range genetic algorithm is used for efficient and robust design optimization. Two-dimensional Navier-Stokes solver is used for accurate aerodynamic performance evaluation. The present computation is parallelized on the SX-6 vector computers in In...

The problem of finding an optimal back-to-front airplane boarding policy is explored, using a mathematical model that is related to the 1+1 polynuclear growth model with concave boundary conditions and to causal sets in gravity. We study all airplane configurations and boarding group sizes. Optimal boarding policies for various airplane configurations are presented. Detailed calculations are pr...

The first flight test phase of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Autonomous Formation Flight project has successfully demonstrated precision autonomous station-keeping of an F/A-18 research airplane with a second F/A-18 airplane. Blended inertial navigation system (INS) and global positioning system (GPS) measurements have been communicated across an air-to-air telemetry link and used to c...

We model and analyze the process of passengers boarding an airplane. We show how the model yields closed-form estimates for the expected boarding time in many cases of interest. Comparison of our computations with previous work, based on discrete event simulations, shows a high degree of agreement. Analysis of the model reveals a clear link between the efficiency of various airline boarding pol...