Marine
The mission of the primary research program is to increase safety on maritime vessels by advancing deck-machinery and robotics. To increase operational availability and welfare during maritime load transfers, the research program focuses on enabling technologies that can be used to compensate for the relative motion on all axes. Specific issues, due to the relative motion between the bodies, arise during cargo transfer between two floating platforms and during launch and recovery operations. The end goal of the program is to reliably launch, recover or transfer any load or object from the sea surface or another vessel to the host ship irrespective of weather conditions or relative motions. The program takes a systems level approach to the problem to make advances in: control algorithms, system modelling, machine vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotic actuation, and mechanical design of marine deck machinery and robotics.
Flight Robotics
The research group is using the signal prediction initially developed in the marine work to improve the landing and tracking abilities for unmanned aerial vehicles. The work involves flight hardware and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
The Carleton University Simulator Project (CUSP) was introduced in the 2002/2003 academic year as an innovative new capstone project with the aim of exposing students to the latest in simulator technology. The CUSP group is lead by a multi-disciplinary team of Lead Engineers, and approximately 18-24 students every year from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. We are developing a novel full-scale flight simulator, called Atlas that offers a unique feature for the pilot – unbounded rotation on all axes.
Terrestrial Robotics & Manufacturing
We are currently beginning a new research area that focuses on the application of robots in machining aerospace components with sensory feedback to achieve high precision and process stability. The goal of this research theme is to improve the various machining processes and reduce waste. The work involves various aspects of sensor fusion, measurement reliability along with path & control strategies to improve the manufacturing processes of thin sheet metal parts for the aircraft industry.