Browsing by Author "Kostopoulos, Vassilis"

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    Autonomous inspection and repair of aircraft composite structures
    (Elsevier, 2018-11-23) Kostopoulos, Vassilis; Psarras, Spyridon; Loutas, Theodoros; Sotiriadis, George; Gray, Iain; Padiyar M, Janardhan; Petrunin, Ivan; Raposo Gaudencio Campos, Joao; Zanotti Fragonara, Luca; Tzitzilonis, Vasileios; Dassios, Konstantinos; Exarchos, Dimitrios; Andrikopoulos, George; Nikolakopoulos, George
    This paper deals with the development of an innovative approach for inspection and repair of damage in aeronautical composites that took place in the first two years of the H2020 CompInnova project which. The aim is a newly designed robotic platform for autonomous inspection using combined infrared thermography (IRT) and phased array (PA) non-destructive investigation for damage detection and characterization, while integrated with laser repair capabilities. This will affect the increasing societal need for safer aircraft in the lowest possible cost, while new and effective techniques of inspection are needed because of the rapidly expanding use of composites in the aerospace industry.
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    Autonomous unmanned heterogeneous vehicles for persistent monitoring
    (MDPI, 2022-04-10) Lappas, Vaios; Shin, Hyosang; Tsourdos, Antonios; Lindgren, David; Bertrand, Sylvain; Marzat, Julien; Piet-Lahanier, Hélène; Daramouskas, Yiannis; Kostopoulos, Vassilis
    Swarms of unmanned vehicles (air and ground) can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of military and law enforcement operations by enhancing situational awareness and allowing the persistent monitoring of multiple hostile targets. The key focus in the development of the enabling technologies for swarm systems is the minimisation of uncertainties in situational awareness information for surveillance operations supported by ‘system of systems’ composed of static and mobile heterogeneous sensors. The identified critical enabling techniques and technologies for adaptive, informative and reconfigurable operations of unmanned swarm systems are robust static sensor network design, mobile sensor tasking (including re-allocation), sensor fusion and information fusion, including behaviour monitoring. The work presented in this paper describes one of the first attempts to integrate all swarm-related technologies into a prototype, demonstrating the benefits of swarms of heterogeneous vehicles for defence applications used for the persistent monitoring of high-value assets, such as military installations and camps. The key enabling swarm system technologies are analysed here, and novel algorithms are presented that can be implemented in available COTS-based unmanned vehicles. The algorithms have been designed and optimised to require small computational power, be flexible, be reconfigurable and be implemented in a large range of commercially available unmanned vehicles (air and ground).
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    EuroDRONE, A European unmanned traffic management testbed for U-space
    (MDPI, 2022-02-18) Lappas, Vaios; Zoumponos, Giorgos; Kostopoulos, Vassilis; Lee, Hae-In; Shin, Hyosang; Tsourdos, Antonios; Tantardini, Marco; Shomko, Dennis; Munoz, Jose; Amoratis, Epameinondas; Maragkakis, Aris; Machairas, Thomas
    EuroDRONE is an Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) demonstration project, funded by the EU’s SESAR organization, and its aim is to test and validate key UTM technologies for Europe’s ‘U-Space’ UTM program. The EuroDRONE UTM architecture comprises cloud software (DroNav) and hardware (transponder) to be installed on drones. The proposed EuroDRONE system is a Highly Automated Air Traffic Management System for small UAVs operating at low altitudes. It is a sophisticated, self-learning system based on software and hardware elements, operating in a distributed computing environment, offering multiple levels of redundancy, fail-safe algorithms for conflict prevention/resolution and assets management. EuroDRONE focuses its work on functionalities which involve the use of new communication links, the use of vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology to communicate information between drones and operators for safe and effective UTM functionality. Practical demonstrations that took place in Patras/Messolonghi in 2019 are presented and show the benefits and shortcomings of near-term UTM implementation in Europe.