Two Master Students of ISAE-SUPAERO presenting their project at AIAA SciTech Forum 2020, Orlando, Florida, USA

Charlie Gunawan (Indonesia) and Guido Magnani (Italy) are two second year’s students of the Master of Science Aerospace Engineering. They are working on a project that has been selected for a presentation in the well-known Forum of the Scitech Conference in Florida on next January 2020.

The AIAA SciTech Forum has been delivering aerospace research and technology that has driven innovative developments for more than 50 years. The 2020 SciTech Forum program will cover the science, technology and research shaping the outlook of aerospace focusing particularly on a sustainable future. The event is the largest in the world for aerospace research, development and technology and will bring together over 1000 undergraduate or graduate students and aerospace professionals from nearly 1000 corporates, academics and government institutions in 42 countries.

The paper that Charlie (Space System major), and Guido (Aircraft Systems and Control major) have written is called: Full 3D Model for Asteroids Dynamics Estimation in a Monocular Vision-Based System, and it is based on their research project: Rotational Dynamics Estimation of an Asteroid. It will be presented in the Space Exploration: EVA Tech; Advanced Robotics; Autonomous Systems and Avionics; Light Weight Structures and Materials sections of the conference.

The paper explains that in early-phase deep space exploration missions, an onboard monocular vision-based navigation system capable of characterizing an asteroid’s shape and dynamics, allows an increase in both autonomy and redundancy resulting in more efficient operations in terms of time and cost. This project introduces a solely monocular, vision-based method that can robustly estimate the full 3D dynamics of an asteroid. This research compares different methods in terms of robustness, accuracy, and time complexity. Advancing from previous works, a reconstruction of a full 3D model is shown to be possible benefiting only from one monocular vision-based system.

The ultimate goal of this project is to make spacecrafts work more autonomously from the ground station, even in case of one camera failure.

According to Charlie, “Participating to this Forum will be the occasion for us to join courses and workshops about the most in vogue topics in the aerospace domain. In particular, our interest is toward Missile Guidance Course and Electric Aircraft Course. This two workshops represent a great opportunity to get closer to the subjects studied at ISAE SUPAERO during the on going semester and will help us in driving our interests in the aerospace domains for our future careers”.
Guido added: “Learning from different kind of experts and various state-of-the-arts technologies around the world will greatly broaden our insights and knowledge toward the international aerospace academics and industry.”

By now, funding the project in order to participate to this the conference is now the biggest challenge that is presented to them. With financials support they will be ready to take part and present their paper at the forum in January.“Through this conference, we will have the opportunity to publish our research to journal publication. Lastly, it is our own personal challenge to be directly involved in presenting our own work in the international program—as one says "putting the cherry on the top".

ISAE-SUPAERO is very proud that some of our students have been selected again to present their project in such famous conference. We would like to congratulate them in the realization of this interesting study and we wish them a great success and the best of luck in order to be able to participate to the next The AIAA SciTech Forum of January 2020, a conference that would be important for their future.

Do not hesitate to contact them through linkedin for support:
Charlie Gunawan
Guido Magnani