Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Over the past 5 years, advanced air mobility (AAM) systems, including autonomous drones, electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL), and urban air mobility aircraft, have seen steady development and early introduction into service. AAM systems represent a significant evolution from other types of traditional aircraft. These systems range from small cargo drones to large multi-passenger air taxis and share some features that set them apart from earlier aircraft systems including ever increasing levels of autonomy including advanced situational awareness systems for automatic deconfliction and collision avoidance without human intervention, and integrated vehicle health monitoring (IVHM) systems for all aircraft systems from the airframe structure to the avionics systems. In this proposed program, a whole-aircraft digital twin (DT) framework will be developed for such advanced air mobility systems.  Using physics-based modelling and simulation strategies and machine learning, this DT framework will capture and replicate the responses of all aircraft systems to real world flight conditions.  The DT framework will be validated using custom built drone platforms fitted with sensors and real-time data collection.  Students supported on this program will conduct flight tests of the drone platforms replicated by a wide range of typical missions (e.g., surveys, aerial photography, cargo delivery, infrastructure protection) to generate realistic loads and operations conditions.  Through the use of open-source tools and non-proprietary tools (e.g. Python, OpenVSP, OpenLCA, etc) the developed DT framework will be accessible to developers, regulators, operators, and other researchers.  On this program, 3 PhD and 2 MASc students will be supported and trained in the development of DT frameworks, flight testing and machine learning.  The PhD students will focus on the development of the underlying framework, physics-based models, machine learning methods for data processing and planning for a flight tests.  The Masters students will design and build the drone-based flight test platform and conduct the flight tests to collect data for the DT framework.