Jonathan A. DeCastro

Bio: Jonathan A. DeCastro is an academic researcher from Toyota. The author has contributed to research in topics: Control theory & Motion planning. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 59 publications receiving 898 citations. Previous affiliations of Jonathan A. DeCastro include Glenn Research Center & TRW Inc..

User's Guide for the Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS)

Abstract: This report is a Users Guide for the NASA-developed Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS) software, which is a transient simulation of a large commercial turbofan engine (up to 90,000-lb thrust) with a realistic engine control system. The software supports easy access to health, control, and engine parameters through a graphical user interface (GUI). C-MAPSS provides the user with a graphical turbofan engine simulation environment in which advanced algorithms can be implemented and tested. C-MAPSS can run user-specified transient simulations, and it can generate state-space linear models of the nonlinear engine model at an operating point. The code has a number of GUI screens that allow point-and-click operation, and have editable fields for user-specified input. The software includes an atmospheric model which allows simulation of engine operation at altitudes from sea level to 40,000 ft, Mach numbers from 0 to 0.90, and ambient temperatures from -60 to 103 F. The package also includes a power-management system that allows the engine to be operated over a wide range of thrust levels throughout the full range of flight conditions.

A Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation of a Large Commercial Aircraft Engine

Abstract: A simulation of a commercial engine has been developed in a graphical environment to meet the increasing need across the controls and health management community for a common research and development platform. This paper describes the Commercial Modular Aero Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS), which is representative of a 90,000-lb thrust class two spool, high bypass ratio commercial turbofan engine. A control law resembling the state-of-the-art on board modern aircraft engines is included, consisting of a fan-speed control loop supplemented by relevant engine limit protection regulator loops. The objective of this paper is to provide a top-down overview of the complete engine simulation package.

Reactive mission and motion planning with deadlock resolution avoiding dynamic obstacles

Abstract: In the near future mobile robots, such as personal robots or mobile manipulators, will share the workspace with other robots and humans. We present a method for mission and motion planning that applies to small teams of robots performing a task in an environment with moving obstacles, such as humans. Given a mission specification written in linear temporal logic, such as patrolling a set of rooms, we synthesize an automaton from which the robots can extract valid strategies. This centralized automaton is executed by the robots in the team at runtime, and in conjunction with a distributed motion planner that guarantees avoidance of moving obstacles. Our contribution is a correct-by-construction synthesis approach to multi-robot mission planning that guarantees collision avoidance with respect to moving obstacles, guarantees satisfaction of the mission specification and resolves encountered deadlocks, where a moving obstacle blocks the robot temporally. Our method provides conditions under which deadlock will be avoided by identifying environment behaviors that, when encountered at runtime, may prevent the robot team from achieving its goals. In particular, (1) it identifies deadlock conditions; (2) it is able to check whether they can be resolved; and (3) the robots implement the deadlock resolution policy locally in a distributed manner. The approach is capable of synthesizing and executing plans even with a high density of dynamic obstacles. In contrast to many existing approaches to mission and motion planning, it is scalable with the number of moving obstacles. We demonstrate the approach in physical experiments with walking humanoids moving in 2D environments and in simulation with aerial vehicles (quadrotors) navigating in 2D and 3D environments.

Robust Fault Diagnosis of Aircraft Engines: A Nonlinear Adaptive Estimation-Based Approach

Abstract: In this brief, a fault detection and isolation (FDI) method is developed for aircraft engines by utilizing nonlinear adaptive estimation techniques. The fault diagnosis method follows a general architecture developed in previous papers, where a fault detection estimator is used for fault detection, and a bank of nonlinear adaptive fault isolation estimators are employed to determine the particular fault type/location. Each isolation estimator is designed based on the functional structure of a particular fault type under consideration. The general FDI architecture is applied to a realistic nonlinear aircraft engine model recently developed by NASA Researchers. In addition, the robustness of the fault diagnostic method with respect to normal engine health degradation is enhanced by adaptive thresholds and adaptive approximation techniques, hence accurate diagnostic performance is maintained while the engine continues to degrade over its lifetime. Some representative simulation results are given to show the effectiveness of the robust nonlinear FDI method.

DiversityGAN: Diversity-Aware Vehicle Motion Prediction via Latent Semantic Sampling

Abstract: Vehicle trajectory prediction is crucial for autonomous driving and advanced driver assistant systems. While existing approaches may sample from a predicted distribution of vehicle trajectories, they lack the ability to explore it – a key ability for evaluating safety from a planning and verification perspective. In this work, we devise a novel approach for generating realistic and diverse vehicle trajectories. We first extend the generative adversarial network (GAN) framework with a low-dimensional approximate semantic space, and shape that space to capture semantics such as merging and turning. We then sample from this space in a way that mimics the predicted distribution, but allows us to control coverage of semantically distinct outcomes. We validate our approach on a publicly available dataset and show results that achieve state-of-the-art prediction performance, while providing improved coverage of the space of predicted trajectory semantics.

A Survey of Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Techniques—Part I: Fault Diagnosis With Model-Based and Signal-Based Approaches

Abstract: With the continuous increase in complexity and expense of industrial systems, there is less tolerance for performance degradation, productivity decrease, and safety hazards, which greatly necessitates to detect and identify any kinds of potential abnormalities and faults as early as possible and implement real-time fault-tolerant operation for minimizing performance degradation and avoiding dangerous situations. During the last four decades, fruitful results have been reported about fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control methods and their applications in a variety of engineering systems. The three-part survey paper aims to give a comprehensive review of real-time fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control, with particular attention on the results reported in the last decade. In this paper, fault diagnosis approaches and their applications are comprehensively reviewed from model- and signal-based perspectives, respectively.

Damage propagation modeling for aircraft engine run-to-failure simulation

Abstract: This paper describes how damage propagation can be modeled within the modules of aircraft gas turbine engines. To that end, response surfaces of all sensors are generated via a thermo-dynamical simulation model for the engine as a function of variations of flow and efficiency of the modules of interest. An exponential rate of change for flow and efficiency loss was imposed for each data set, starting at a randomly chosen initial deterioration set point. The rate of change of the flow and efficiency denotes an otherwise unspecified fault with increasingly worsening effect. The rates of change of the faults were constrained to an upper threshold but were otherwise chosen randomly. Damage propagation was allowed to continue until a failure criterion was reached. A health index was defined as the minimum of several superimposed operational margins at any given time instant and the failure criterion is reached when health index reaches zero. Output of the model was the time series (cycles) of sensed measurements typically available from aircraft gas turbine engines. The data generated were used as challenge data for the prognostics and health management (PHM) data competition at PHMpsila08.

High temperature shape memory alloys

Abstract: Shape memory alloys (SMAs) with high transformation temperatures can enable simplifications and improvements in operating efficiency of many mechanical components designed to operate at tem...

Planning and Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract: In this review, we provide an overview of emerging trends and challenges in the field of intelligent and autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles. Recent advances in the field of perception, planning,...