Alfatroll IQ Engine steering of UAV

= Autonomous operations and certification of vehicles in the air = Unmanned aircrafts (UAV) are regarded as solutions for a variety of applications, ranging from transport and monitoring up to exploitation. The main hinder in the applicability of UAVs has been the certification being required for UAVs to enter civil air space. The Euro-Hawk disaster in Germany is a well known example of this challenge. Over 600 million Euro were used to adopt an american UAV for the german airspace, and in mid 2013 the whole project was terminated, «because we were not even close to get the certification in place».

While most companies try to develop hardware to get certified, the solution presented by Alfatroll focusses solely on software. An patent-pending adaptation of search technologies allows to fly «by search from a database», where content of the database is created in an adaptive an intelligent way based on the results from traditional modelling in a back-end system. The resulting on-line system in the aircraft has only one component to be certified, the IQ_Engine for intelligent query of the knowledge database. «If we ever want to fly a civil UAV, we need to think differently. And the IQ_Engine concept has the potential of being the solution for a wide range of UAVs», according to Josef Noll, professor at UiO/UNIK.

In the seminar we will present the solution, explain the findings and will suggest ongoing topics for master and PhD work.

Agenda

 * 12:30h - Introduction and Welcome (Kaja/Josef)
 * 12:40h - about Alfatroll and the IQ_Engine
 * 13:10h - YouTube video with comment
 * 13:15h - Q&A
 * 13:30h - end of part 1
 * 13:30-14:00 Discussion on potential master topics related to the subject

YouTube video


The YouTube video presents how an autopilot for UAVs can be made using a knowledge based reasoning engine instead of a traditional PID controller. All functions are present in the knowledge database, while the IQ_Engine is a generic reasoning engine. The results are astounding, and opens up for really intelligent pilots. as well as other smart autonomous systems.

= Speaker // foredragsholder= Tor Olav Steine has a long-standing tradition in developing efficient IT-systems. He is one of the «grand old man» from Norsk Data, and has since then been behind the foundation of several up-starts, including an on-line mapping vendor, and a yellow pages vendor.

His ability to look beyond traditional thinking, and is emphasising simplicity as essential for large systems Tor Steines interest for flying through 45 years triggered his mind to look for new solutions for unmanned aircraft. He is now developing the concept in co-operation with 23 international partners through the JU Artemis project nSHIELD, and is looking for students to take the project further into practical solutions.

= Further reading =
 * Course MAE331 from Robert Stengel, Princeton University
 * Matlab code for business aircraft http://www.princeton.edu/~stengel/FDcodeB.html
 * Matlab code for paper aircraft http://www.princeton.edu/~stengel/PaperPlane.html