Recent activites

Recently, I started working on Model Predictive Control (MPC) applied to multi-rotor aerial systems with arbitrarily positioned and oriented rotors as a high-performance constrained and predictive control technique. Also, I am focusing on Temporal Logic, specifically Signal Temporal Logic (STL), as a mission specification language for path planning problems. Such technique allows incorporating explicit timing constraints and translate the whole problem in mixed integer-linear constraints on the system variables. In addition, I'm exploring the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) topic, specifically planning and control solutions to provide ancillary services to the grid as a way to improve its efficiency.

Doctorate topic

The aim of my research was to illustrate the role and the effectiveness of software-in-the-loop (SIL) methodologies for the analysis and control design of flight controllers for small UAV systems. The research proposes a novel SIL methodology to detect and manage instabilities of multi-rotor aircraft system that otherwise might not arise when considering only MATLAB/Simulink simulations. The use of the SIL methodology allows to understand the behavior of the flight control system by comparing and evaluating different scenarios, with a details level quite close to reality thanks to the use of the Gazebo robotics simulator. At the same time, it is possible to discover issues that a model-in-the-loop (MIL) simulation does not necessarily detect, even if carried out through a multi-physics co-simulation approach.

Thesis topics

Students interested on automatic control topics for their thesis (both Bachelor and Master degrees) can drop me an e-mail.

Info

If you'd like to know more about me, please stay tuned on this web page, or feel free to contact me. Also, check out my Publications and Software pages for my latest publications and repositories, respectively.