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Analysis, modeling and control of the airport departure process
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013)
Increased air traffic demand over the past two decades has resulted in significant increases in surface congestion at major airports in the United States. The overall objective of this thesis is to mitigate the adverse ...
Control of spacecraft in proximity orbits
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007)
Formation flying of spacecraft and autonomous rendezvous and docking of spacecraft are two missions in which satellites operate in close proximity and their relative trajectories are critically important. Both classes of ...
Methods and tools for the formulation, evaluation and optimization of rover mission concepts
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007)
Traditionally, Mars rover missions have been conceived with a single point design approach, exploring a limited architectural trade space. The design of future missions must resolve a conflict between increasingly ambitious ...
Modeling aviation's global emissions, uncertainty analysis, and applications to policy
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005)
(cont.) fuel burn results below 3000 ft. For emissions, the emissions indices were the most influential uncertainties for the variance in model outputs. By employing the model, this thesis examined three policy options for ...
A Gauss pseudospectral transcription for optimal control
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005)
A pseudospectral method for solving nonlinear optimal control problems is proposed in this thesis. The method is a direct transcription that transcribes the continuous optimal control problem into a discrete nonlinear ...
Integrated modeling and design of lightweight, active mirrors for launch survival and on-orbit performance
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010)
Lightweight, active mirrors are an enabling technology for large aperture, space-based optical systems. These mirrors have the potential to improve the optical resolution and sensitivity beyond what is currently possible. ...
Design of a numerical model for simulation of blood microcirculation and study of sickle cell disease
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010)
Sickle cell disease is nowadays one of the most challenging blood diseases, where patients suffer from both chronic and acute episodes of painful medical conditions. In particular, unpredictable crises due to blood vessel ...
Quantative [sic] selection and design of model generation architectures for on-orbit autonomous assembly
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010)
On-orbit assembly is an enabling technology for many space applications. However, current methods of human assisted assembly are high in cost and risk to the crew. Thus, there is a desire to automate the on-orbit assembly ...
Robust hybrid control for autonomous vehicle motion planning
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001)
This dissertation focuses on the problem of motion planning for agile autonomous vehicles. In realistic situations, the motion planning problem must be solved in real-time, in a dynamic and uncertain environment. The ...
Fully kinetic numerical modeling of a plasma thruster
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001)
A Hall effect plasma thruster with conductive acceleration channel walls was numerically modeled using 2D3V Particle-in-Cell (PIC) and Monte-Carlo Collision (MCC) methodolo- gies. Electron, ion, and neutral dynamics were ...