Acrobat

Introduction

In the final semester of the Bachelor’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico students enroll in a course named 1st Cycle Integrated Project in Aerospace Engineering ¹.

The integrated project may fall within one of three modalities: 1. Scientific project, 2. Company project and 3. JUNO project. I went for the JUNO project type: multidisciplinary team work based on real and complex problems/challenges posed by companies or other institutions that require inputs from students from different courses of IST or the University of Lisbon.

Recruitment

For a year and a half I had been part of university project named Rocket Experiment Division. My team leader at that time, Lucas Gonçalves, had joined the Acrobat project outside the Integrated Project course context. A few months before the beggining of the final semester of my degree, Lucas invited me to take part in the project in the context of the Integrated Project course. In total, we were a group of 6 bachelor’s degree students, 3 from aerospace engineering (me, Lucas and Alex) and 3 from eletrotechnical and computer engineering (Afonso, David and Inês). As part of the initial agreement, everyone involved would contribute to the evaluation process of both degrees, since they differed from one degree to another.

Tasks

I was responsible for the following areas of the project:

• Dynamics and Kinematics Modelling
• Control Systems Programming
• PWM Signal Processing
• Trajectory and Path Planning

Depending on the task in particular, I would be working individually or arranging meetings with a colleague. In the early and final moments of the project, group working was important in order to set goals and to integrate everyone’s work.

My work

Propeller study

Body dynamics

Model Predictive Controller

LEAer submissions

LEEC submissions

References