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A cost effective, portable particulate control system was developed, built, and evaluated at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Prototype of the presented system was developed for experimental assessment and its computational model was also created for CFD simulation. The experimental and computer simulation results showed that the developed system could efficiently and safely remove and dispose accumulated particulate matter (in the size range of 5 ∼ 1000 μm), and be tolerant to the abrasive properties that the particulate matter may have. The developed particulate control system as well as the applied technology can be further optimized and extended to be applied in aerospace and space engineering to remove suspended particles out from the closed cabinet of aircrafts or spacecrafts. The outcome of this project will also impact other commercial sectors and industries.

The autonomous collision avoidance problem for multi-trailer vehicle maneuvering is investigated in this paper. Different from conventional vehicle systems that contain one single moving part or multi-parts that can be considered as one rigid body, the interconnection between the tractor and each trailer, and interactions between trailers in the multi-trailer system introduce a high dimensional and highly complex dynamic system for the controller design. The external disturbance and parametric uncertainties further increase the difficulty in system identification and state space formulation. To implement a real time control system for various scenarios where the locations and states of the obstacles are not known beforehand, a supervisory algorithm is designed to convert the control problem to a discrete event system. The model predictive control (MPC) using limited lookahead policy is employed in the proposed algorithm.

A robot mining system was developed by the State Space Robotic undergraduate student design team from Mississippi State University (MSU) for the 2016 NASA Robotic Mining Competition. The mining robot was designed to traverse the Martian chaotic terrain, excavate a minimum of 10 kg of Martian regolith and deposit the regolith into a collector bin within 10 minutes as part of the competition. A Systems Engineering approach was followed in proceeding with this design project. The designed mining robot consisted of two major components: (1) mechanical system and (2) control system. This paper mainly focuses on the design and assessment process of the mechanical system but will also briefly mention the control system so as to evaluate the designed robotic system in its entirety. The final designed robot consisted of an aluminum frame driven by four motors and wheels. It utilized a scoop and lifting arm subsystem for collecting and depositing Martian regolith.