16th IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace (Saint-Petersburg, Russia, June, 2004)

Citation

Hajiyev, C. (2004), "16th IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace (Saint-Petersburg, Russia, June, 2004)", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 76 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2004.12776fac.001

16th IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace (Saint-Petersburg, Russia, June, 2004)

16th IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace (Saint-Petersburg, Russia, June, 2004)

The 16th IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace was recently held at Saint-Petersburg (Russia). The International Programme Committee was headed by the Chairman: Prof. V.G. Peshekhonov (Russia). The National Organizing Committee was headed by Chairman: Prof. A. Nabylov.

The Symposium was organized by the International Institute for Advanced Aerospace Technologies (IIAAT) of State University of Aerospace Instrumentation on behalf of IFAC. Co-organizer was Central Research and Scientific Institute CSRI “Elektropribor”.

The International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), IFAC Technical Committee on Aerospace, ESA (European Space Agency) and IFAC Technical Committee on Computers and Telematics, sponsored the symposium.

It was also supported by Russian IFAC NMO, Russian Ministry of Science and Technologies, Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Russian Foundation “Integration”, St Petersburg City Government, Academy of Navigation and Motion Control.

This symposium is the 16th one in the series of planed IFAC Symposia on Automatic Control in Aerospace, and the first one held in Russia. The 14th Symposium was held in 1999 in Seoul, Korea and the15th Symposium in 2001 in Bologna, Italy.

According to the general scope of IFAC Technical Committee on Aerospace activity, it was decided that the symposium will cover every aspect of dynamics, control and mission control of aeronautical and space related systems. This includes launch and re-entry vehicles, missiles, satellites, space stations and probes, aircraft, helicopters, autonomous aerospace systems. Control, navigation and guidance systems, their optimization, testing and verification methods, system conceptual definition were considered as the areas of interest. Theory and applications, analysis and design methods, recent research and future trends were planned to be presented. Contributions based on recent flight experience were particularly welcome.

According to the international reviewing results, 51 oral presentations in regular sessions, 30 oral presentations in special sessions and 109 poster presentations were included in the Symposium program. Besides, the program includes six plenary lectures devoted to the analysis of current status and prospects of development of national and international aerospace programs, and also some key problems of automatic control theory applications in aerospace field. There were nine regular and six special sessions in the symposium:

1. 1.

   Regular sessions:

   • •

     Current Status of National and International Aerospace Programs (plenary lectures only)

   • •

     Spacecraft Attitude and Orbital Control

   • •

     Autonomous Control, Mission Control and Operations

   • •

     Space Robotics and Manipulators

   • •

     Guidance and Control Theory and Analysis

   • •

     Flight Control for Aircraft and Helicopters

   • •

     Missile Guidance, Navigation and Control

   • •

     Robust Control for Aerospace Applications

   • •

     Sensors, On-board Equipment and Signal Processing

2. 2.

   Special sessions:

   • •

     Fault Tolerant Control Systems for Aerospace Applications

   • •

     Student Aerospace Projects

   • •

     Launcher Control

   • •

     Gas Turbine Engine Health Monitoring

   • •

     Cooperative Control

   • •

     Satellite Navigation Systems GPS/ GLONASS Application

Now about scientific and applied components of the symposium. Of course, the plenary papers were the most interesting and attracted the most attention.

In the plenary paper “Russian Space Programs: Achievements and Prospects of Automatic Control Applications” the author V. Legostaev (Korolev's Rocket-Space Corporation “Energia”, Russia) describes the history and evolution of control systems, principles of their development, and the latest concepts.

The plenary paper by R. Sackheim (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, USA) “The US Vision for Space Exploration” was devoted to the exploration vision and discuss budgetary, scientific, and top-level technical considerations. The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance US scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the US will implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond, and promote international and commercial participation.

In the plenary paper by P. Silvestrin (European Space Agency, The Netherlands) “On-board Control and Navigation system Advances for the New European Earth Observation Missions” several new missions of ESA's Earth observation program are presented. In 2005-2008 the following satellites will be launched: Gryosat (ice altimetry); GOCE (gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation); Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS); ADM-Aeolus (Atmospheric Dynamics). Other projects under study include: Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE); Surface Processes and Ecosystem Changes Through Response Analysis (Spectra); Water vApour and Lidar Experiment in Space (WALES); Atmosphere and Climate Explorer (ACE+); the European contribution to the Global Precipitation Mission (EGPM); and Swarm, to study the dynamics of the magnetic field. Other new projects rely on the performance and affordability of on- board control systems. Relevant initiatives are presented, especially for sensor technologies, such as autonomous star-trackers and precise GPS/ Galileo system. Concepts behind some post-2010 missions are shown, identifying related research trends in control/navigation systems.

In the plenary paper “Current Status of Japanese Aerospace Programs-Focusing on High Speed Flight Demonstration” by Y. Miyazawa (Flight Systems Research Center, Japan) an overview of the current status of Japanese aerospace programs, including launch vehicles, satellites, university space programs, and aeronautical research and development are presented. Following the overview, the paper describes the High Speed Flight Demonstration program, a flight experiment program using sub- scale vehicles to investigate the re-entry terminal flight phase of reusable space vehicles.

In the plenary paper “National Achievements in Control Theory: The Aerospace Respective” the authors A. B. Kurzhanski (Moscow State (Lomonosov) University, Russia) and V. F. Krotov (Institute for Control Problems, Russia) describe the history and evolution of optimal control theory, principles of their development, and the latest concepts applied to the rocket launching and navigation in aerospace. Aerospace motivations led to new techniques of state estimation and identification and also to the development of impulsive control theory. A field related to automation in navigation, flight control and air traffic safety was discussed.

The plenary paper by R. Isermann “Model- Based Fault Detection and Diagnosis-Status and Applications” for the improvement of reliability, safety and efficiency advanced methods of supervision, fault detection and fault diagnosis was presented. The author remarks that the classical approaches are limit or trend checking of some measurable output variables. Because they do not give a deeper insight and usually do not allow a fault diagnosis, model-based methods of fault detection were developed by using input and output signals and applying dynamic process models. These methods are based on signal model, parameter estimation, parity equations, or state observers. The goal is to generate several symptoms indicating the difference between nominal and faulty status. Based on different symptoms fault diagnosis procedures follow, determining the fault by applying classification or inference methods. This contribution gives a short introduction into the field and shows some applications for an actuator, a passenger car and a combustion engine.

It is necessary to note that in spite of interesting theoretical papers the majority papers of the symposium were devoted to practical problems, more exactly to such a problem how new recent theoretical results to apply for solving of practical problems. To see this fact it is enough only to name some papers. For example, the paper by S. D. Zemlyakov and V. Yu Rutkovsky (Russia) “Computer Aided Modeling and Analytical Synthesis of Control Algorithms for a Spacecraft with Discretely Changing Structure”; the paper by M. F. Al-Malki and D-W. Gu (UK) “Design, and Analysis of Helicopter Fault-Tolerant Control System; the paper by Ye. I. Somov and O. Ye. Polyntsev (Russia) “Nonlinear Dynamics of a Gyroplane Rotor”; the paper by J. Dupres and F. Mora-Camino (France) “Aircraft-On-Ground Lateral Control for Low Speed Maneuvers”; the paper by M. Jeanneau, N. Aversa, S. Delannoy and M. Hockenhull (France) “Awiator's Study of a Wing Load Control: Design and Flight-Test Results; the paper by P. Castaldi, M. Crisci and M. Zanzi (Italy) “FDI Algorithms for GPS Signals: a Different Perspective of a Known Problem; the paper by R. Fullmer (USA) and K. Schilling (Germany) “System Design and Attitude Control Analyses for the Pico-Satellite UWE-1”; and so on.

The total number of papers in the preprints is 196, divided into two volumes.

The final version of all presented papers will be published in the Symposium Proceedings by the Elsevier IFAC Publications Office.

Chingiz HajiyevProfessor, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Istanbul Technical University