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Quadrelli, Marco M

Publications and source records attributed to Quadrelli, Marco M.

7 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2022

Adaptive Force Control for Small Celestial Body Sampling

An adaptive force control algorithm for small celestial body sampling for a variety of surface properties is developed. The control algorithm consists of an adaptive controller combined with feedback linearization. When a spacecraft makes contact with the surface, it must maintain a desired contact force in order to capture a sample. The properties of the surface are unknown or uncertain before contact with the surface is made. The adaptive controller performs system identification online to create an input-output model of the feedback linearized system. From the input-output model a block observable canonical form is realized and the control input is determined by model predictive control (MPC) to maintain a desired contact force in spite of the unknown surface properties. The approach is applied to a variety of surface properties with linear and nonlinear contact models.

Quadrelli, Marco M↗
NASA NTRS2021

Modernizing Mechatronics Course With Quantum Engineering

Mechatronics is the synergistic application of mechanics, electronics, control engineering, and computer science in the development of electromechanical products and systems, through integrated design. This paper proposes to extend the mechatronics course beyond traditional engineering topics, and to modernize the mechatronics instructions with complementary quantum engineering topics. With the recent rapid advances in quantum technologies such as quantum communications, sensing, computers, and algorithms, it is imperative to train the next generation of engineers and prepare them for their future careers in the ever-changing industry in such areas. Furthermore, due to such progress and advances in the fields associated with quantum mechanics, the integration of quantum technologies with classical mechanical systems will be inevitable both in terms of educational and technological standpoints in future. To address the educational needs of the future engineers in such areas of significant importance, quantum entanglement and quantum cryptography experiments, as two fundamental topics in quantum mechanics, are brought into the mechatronics course in an initiative that is reported in this paper. The integrated quantum and mechatronics topics also provides opportunities for open discussions on exploring the interface of quantum technologies and classical engineering systems, which can potentially push the engineering boundaries beyond classical possibilities by accessing the quantum advantages. An innovative online remote demonstration of such quantum experiments are developed and presented to the students. This course has been offered to undergraduate students once with successful results. The students were able to remotely access the experiments, perform the experiments and collect data. The successful result of such quantum experiments is also reflected in a course survey, presented in this paper, even though the quantum mechanics topics offered in this course are unfamiliar to engineering students and hence more challenging. The paper reports, and aims to promote, the integration of selected quantum technology topics with the mechatronics course for training engineering students in this rapidly growing area.

Ghazinejad, Maziar↗
NASA NTRS2020

Projection-Based Inter-Agent Collision Avoidance in Dual Agent Systems

Inter-agent collisions can occur in otherwise dynamically-stable (i.e., Lyapunov stable) dual-agent leaderfollower systems. These inter-agent collisions between the leader and the follower happen during the transient phase of the system’s evolution, although the steady-state behavior of the system is asymptotically/exponentially stable. Therefore, to avoid such inter-agent collisions, it is essential to control the relative error trajectory between the leader and the follower during the transient phase of the system’s evolution. In this paper, we introduce a novel projection operator based modelreference control architecture that can mitigate impending inter-agent collisions by modifying the transient dynamics of relative trajectories. This controller augments the follower’s baseline controller and consists of two essential components: a collision-free reference model based on the projection operator and a model reference tracking controller to guide the follower to follow the reference-model. This paper defines the concept of transient-instability in leader-follower systems, introduces collision mitigation controller architecture, and presents an illustrative example demonstrating its effectiveness.

Bayard, David S.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Experimental Validation of Swarm Array Results Using Mars Cube One (Marco) A,B Downlink Signals

In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of calibrating an orbiting phased array composed of CubeSat class spacecraft together with a larger reference (or “chief”) spacecraft, comprising an overall Swarm Array. Considered as an analog to the Deep Space Network (DSN) Uplink Arraying problem [1], a spaceborne Swarm Array that can potentially deliver comparable or even greater operational performance than large monolithic spacecraft (such as increased data rates for telecommunications, or greater baselines for improved spatial resolution), thus increasing future mission capability but with significantly enhanced flexibility, evolvability and robustness.

Kahan, Daniel↗