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In many applications, one is interested in classifying trajectories of Hamiltonian systems as invariant tori, islands, or chaos. The convergence rate of ergodic Birkhoff averages can be used to categorize these regions, but many iterations…
We study the effect of advection and small diffusion on passive tracers. The advecting velocity field is assumed to have mean zero and to possess time-periodic stream lines. Using a canonical transform to action-angle variables followed by…
We develop a technique for estimating the inner eccentricity in hierarchical triple systems with well separated components. We investigate systems with initially circular and coplanar orbits and comparable masses. The technique is based on…
Here we generalize our previous model of molecular motors trafficking subdiffusing cargos in viscoelastic cytosol by (i) including mechanochemical coupling between cyclic conformational fluctuations of the motor protein driven by the…
This article solves an optimal control problem arising in attitude control of a spacecraft under state and control constraints. We first derive the discrete-time attitude dynamics by employing discrete mechanics. The orientation transfer,…
This work presents the first application of the state-of-the-art Koenig-D'Amico reachable set theory solver to cislunar, chaotic relative motion in the Circular-Restricted Three-Body Problem (CR3BP). The relative motion dynamics of two…
We present a Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm for energy management in aircraft with hybrid electric propulsion systems consisting of gas turbine and electric motor components. Series and parallel configurations are considered. By…
Stochastic optimal control problems have a long tradition in applied probability, with the questions addressed being of high relevance in a multitude of fields. Even though theoretical solutions are well understood in many scenarios, their…
Low-thrust trajectory design and in-flight control remain two of the most challenging topics for new-generation satellite operations. Most of the solutions currently implemented are based on reference trajectories and lead to sub-optimal…
Aerocapture leverages atmospheric drag to convert a spacecraft's hyperbolic trajectory into a bound orbit. For some aerocapture missions, heating due to the radiation of high temperature gases in the shock-layer can be much larger than the…
Model predictive control (MPC) has established itself as the primary methodology for constrained control, enabling general-purpose robot autonomy in diverse real-world scenarios. However, for most problems of interest, MPC relies on the…
A pure two-body problem has seven integrals including the Kepler energy, the Laplace vector, and the angular momentum vector. However, only five of them are independent. When the five independent integrals are preserved, the two other…
The orbital motion of a binary system is characterized by various characteristic temporal intervals which, by definition, are different from each other: the draconitic, anomalistic and sidereal periods. They all coincide in the Keplerian…
We look into the minimisation of the connection time between non-equilibrium steady states. As a prototypical example of an intrinsically non-equilibrium system, a driven granular gas is considered. For time-independent driving, its natural…
Electrified propulsion is expected to play an important role in the sustainable development of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). However, the limited energy density of batteries motivates the need to minimize energy consumption during flight.…
Parallel replica dynamics is a method for accelerating the computation of processes characterized by a sequence of infrequent events. In this work, the processes are governed by the overdamped Langevin equation. Such processes spend much of…
Airborne wind energy systems aim to generate renewable energy by means of the aerodynamic lift produced by a wing tethered to the ground and controlled to fly crosswind paths. The problem of maximizing the average power developed by the…
Orbit-attitude hovering of a spacecraft at the natural relative equilibria in the body-fixed frame of a uniformly rotating asteroid is discussed in the framework of the full spacecraft dynamics, in which the spacecraft is modeled as a rigid…
Most applications of Bayesian Inference for parameter estimation and model selection in astrophysics involve the use of Monte Carlo techniques such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and nested sampling. However, these techniques are time…
Cooperative control of groups of autonomous vehicles (AVs), i.e., platoons, is a promising direction to improving the efficiency of autonomous transportation systems. In this context, distributed co-optimization of both vehicle speed and…