AEM Seminar: TODAY, April 18th - Prof John Valasek, Director of the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, Texas A&M University
Molly Schmitz
Spring 2025 Seminar Series
AEM Seminar:
Novel Multiple Time Scale Adaptive Control for Uncertain Nonlinear Dynamical Systems
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. An extra feature of the KAMS theory enables adaptive control to be used on non-minimum phase systems, which is inherent to most fixed-wing air vehicles in the pitch axis dynamics. 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.
Bio: John Valasek is Professor and Drs. L. Diane '88 and John E. Hurtado '91 Professor of aerospace engineering, Thaman Professor of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence, 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. His research is focused on bridging the scientific gaps between traditional computer science topics and aerospace engineering topics, while achieving a high degree of closure between theory and experiment. 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 for “Pioneering contributions and outstanding leadership in flight mechanics and control leading to new capabilities in autonomous air refueling, morphing flight, and flight safety,” and the recipient of the 2014 ASEE/AIAA John Leeland Atwood Award for national outstanding aerospace educator. John is the TAMU Site Director for the NSF Center for Autonomous Air Mobility and Sensing (CAAMS) and has conducted more than 600 fixed-wing and rotorcraft UAS test flights over a 26 year period at TAMU. 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.
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