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Emanuel Stingu – Taking Control

Electrical engineering Ph.D. student Emanuel Stingu says he likes to take on challenges that are the most difficult and most interesting. Designing control programs for self-directed helicopters and flying platforms meets those requirements.

Working in a lab in the Automation & Robotics Research Institute, Emanuel devises control algorithms and then builds electronic systems that monitor flight characteristics and execute guidance commands for autonomous flying vehicles. That doesn’t sound easy, and it isn’t.

An assortment of sensors is used to monitor the position of the vehicle. To maintain stable flight, autonomous aircraft need to be directed by extremely robust control systems that can combine desired flight programs with sensor information and send responding corrections in about 20 milliseconds.

Emanuel has been working on increasingly complex systems for more than two years. He has used model helicopters of various sizes, moving to larger and more powerful ones as the weight and complexity of the on-board computer he designed increased. The latest version is more than four feet in length and carries a control system that, though somewhat lightweight, has the processing power of a typical laptop computer.

In the lab, the helicopter is mounted to a five-axis frame that allows free movement – up to a point. This allows Emanuel to run through various tests before committing the aircraft to completely free flight outdoors. It also reduces the chance of crashing.

One of Emanuel’s novel creations is a flying platform powered by four rotors. Alternate motors counter-rotate, compensating for the rotational torque of spinning rotor blades. Delicately balanced, the platform responds quickly to slight changes in the speed of any of the rotors.

Experimentation seems to come naturally to Emanuel. His father was a physicist, so Emanuel spent much of his early years playing in a laboratory. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the Technical University of Iasi in Romania, Emanuel came to UT Arlington at the urging of Draguna Vrabie, a graduate student here who had once been a graduate teaching assistant in one of Emanuel’s courses and who recognized his potential. Draguna had come to UT Arlington to study under Dr. Frank Lewis, who has a worldwide reputation as a controls expert. Now both work with Dr. Lewis.