My research work is focused on Control aspects of aircraft and rotorcraft. In particular I've been working on Aircraft-Pilot Coupling (APC) and pilot modelling. APC refers to various pilot-aircraft interactions either benign or malignant. My work reflects measures to avoid unwanted APC events and this term is being used in this context. Occurrence of APC events can be traced back to the first aircraft ever built and hence has been a widely known phenomenon in aviation industry. Numerous attempts have been made to avoid this phenomenon but no single method is known to predict and prevent its occurrence. Moreover certain class of APC events cannot be predicted at all.
It turns out that the pilot is a key factor in any APC occurrence. By definition, these events cannot happen unless the pilot interacts with the aircraft. Unfortunately the mainstream analysis techniques have been to model the pilot using a simple gain whereas the pilot is a much more complex entity. This leads to a curtailed pilot model.
The research undertaken by me addresses the prediction of various APC events on the one hand and issues related to modelling pilot on the other.
My first degree has been in Electronics and Software Engineering. I did my third year B.Eng. project on Condition Monitoring and Fault Diagnosis of systems using Neural Network techniques. Dr. Michael J. Pont was my project supervisor.
Neural Network is a branch of artificial intelligence (A.I.) that deals with modelling functionalities of our brain. The particular neural network technique adopted for this project is called radial basis functions (RBF) technique. The aim of this project was to monitor and diagnose the faults that occur in any real system without human interference. This aspect of the project has been given the name condition monitoring and fault diagnosis.
The project was a huge success and results obtained were affirmative.
|
|
Author: Abhishek Kumar,
last updated 17/03/2003.
This document has been approved by the Head of Department.
Any views and opinions expressed are the author's and not those of the
University of Leicester.
