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Model based fault diagnosis aims at detecting and isolating at an early stage the degradations in the operation of a technical system. It relies on the computation of fault indicators, also called residuals. The latter characterize the discrepancy between the data measured on-line on the supervised system and a mathematical model of this system describing its normal behavior or certain faulty behaviors. These indicators are processed in a so-called decision system in order to determine whether some of the residuals are significantly different from zero, and to deduce the most likely fault(s) from the pattern of zero and non-zero residuals.

Advanced control of nonlinear dynamic system subject to constraints, with emphasis on reference governor methods directions

DETAILS ON THE SECOND RESEARCH DIRECTION

The group specializes in the control of system subject to constraints through both predictive and non-predictive methods. The main goal is the development of new computationally efficient constrained control methods.

The main lines of research are:
– Command and Reference Governor Schemes
– NON-optimization Based Constrained Control Schemes

and their applications to:
– Aerial Robotics
– Distributed Systems (Power Networks)

Electric energy production, distribution and storage methods

DETAILS ON THE FIRST APPLICATION AREA

Projects in electricity production and distribution aim at improving the availability of renewable energy sources, at accounting for the variability of renewable energy production in network security assessment and at ensuring ancillary services. The focus is on wind turbine and wind farm monitoring and control. Another objective is to improve the performance of battery storage by designing advanced battery management systems for Lithium-ion batteries on the basis of electrochemical models. Improvements aim at covering a wider operating range of the battery (faster charge/discharge operation thanks to proper handling of technological constraints) and ensuring higher reliability trough monitoring of the state of health and battery pack reconfiguration.

Mechatronics (UAVs and robotics)methods

DETAILS ON THE SECOND APPLICATION AREA

The goal is to develop control units for Unmanned Aerial Systems to enable the UAVs (quadrotors, multirotors, blimps, etc.) to interact with the environment and to perform operations.

The main research projects ongoing are:
– Control of Tethered Quadrotors
– Control of Teams of UAVs and Ground Vehicles manipulating objects

MA1 Projects, Master Thesis, and possible subjects for doctoral applications are available on the subject: control of UAVs subject to constraints, control of UAV interacting with walls, control and navigation of blimp with visual information.

The research in robotics is notably studying force feedback in teleoperation with a view to surgical applications. Indeed, in minimally invasive surgery, the surgeon loses the sense of touch. Yet, this is fundamental for a certain number of operations like needle insertion in a specific layer of a tissue or palpation of an organ. We aim at developing specific master slave devices with force feedbacks for such tasks and, more generally, to study control algorithms in bilateral teleoperation.

Industrial processes methods

DETAILS ON THE THIRD APPLICATION AREA

Providing tools for predictive maintenance and performance monitoring is the main objective of the projects in this application area. The considered issues include fouling monitoring in heat exchangers and gas turbines, leak detection in lubrication circuits, sensor and actuator monitoring in an activated sludge process and weld quality estimation in continuous strip lines. Monitoring and optimization of production processes involving a separation step through Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) chromatography is an on-going research direction.