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Towards More Reliable and Intelligent Air Vehicles

Posted on 28/05/09
University of Leicester

A futuristic view of air travel will be provided by a University of Leicester Professor in an inaugural lecture held at the campus.

The Lecture will tackle vital developments within the air travel industry that are likely to revolutionise air travel.

Professor Da-Wei Gu, of the Department of Engineering, will illustrate his research to reduce accidents for safer air travel.

His on-going research on aircraft health monitoring, fault and failure detection could provide an integral new way for aircraft flight procedure.

The inaugural lecture takes place at the Ken Edwards Building, Lecture Theatre 1at the University of Leicester on 2nd June 2009 at 5.30 pm. It is open to the public and free.

Professor Da- Wei Gu Said: The Aerospace industry is one of the most rapidly developing industries in the 21st century. Travelling by air is fast and convenient.

Simulation examples show how incipient faults can be detected at an early stage and adequate actions can be taken to prevent any further deterioration of aircraft performance.

The aim of the research is towards a highly autonomous flight control system, without or with less human pilot input in the air.

Flying is most peoples dream. To make flying an aircraft easier, it is necessary to raise the autonomy level of aircraft control.

This talk will also introduce how research has been carried out to select flight paths for air vehicles optimally and safely, in real-time to avoid obstacles and/or hazardous regions.

Da-Wei Gu has published more than 180 refereed papers and two books, Perturbation Theory for Matrix Equations (Elsevier, May 2003) and Robust Control Design with MATLAB (Springer, June 2005).

Biography

Da-Wei Gu was born in Shanghai, China. He was a farm worker for a few years, before he had an opportunity to take part in a nation-wide university entrance exam.

He entered Fudan University in 1978, and graduated from Department of Mathematics, and further received the M.Sc. degree in applied mathematics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

He came to England in 1982 and was awarded a Ph.D. degree in control system theory from Imperial College, London, in 1985, followed by a postdoctoral research post in Oxford University.

In 1989, he was appointed to a University Lectureship at Leicester University, and subsequently promoted to a Senior Lecturer, Reader and now a Professor.

Da-Wei Gus research interests include robust and optimal control, optimization algorithms and numerical perturbation analysis, with applications in aerospace and manufacturing industry.

He has made significant contributions to the development of H? optimal control, super optimal H? control, low-order controller design, mixed optimisation control systems design, and strong stabilisation methods.