School of Aeronautics and Astronautics undergraduate student Joseph Lorenzetti was awarded third place for the College of Engineering at the recent Undergraduate Research and Poster Symposium. The symposium was open to all undergraduates from any college at Purdue, giving students the opportunity to present their research in either independent study or individually arranged projects with a professor. The poster sessions were judged by faculty from the students’ colleges.

Lorenzetti is a student of Professor Inseok Hwang, and his research project examines the advantages of using various open source tools to help perform dynamics and control. His project, titled Utilizing Open Source Tools for Dynamics and Control Analysis of Non-linear Systems, used a self-balancing robot as his test platform because it is an unstable system, but is still relatively simple.

Lorenzetti’s project utilized a robot is powered with the PixHawk autopilot system, which is a popular open source autopilot.  His objective was to derive the equations of motion for the system, perform system identification analysis, and design a controller using only open source tools.  For this project Lorenzetti used Python based tools to accomplish these objectives.  Specifically, he utilized five different Python modules: SymPy, NumPy, Control, SciPy, and PyLab.  Lorenzetti notes, “I believe the most significant result from this project is demonstrating the power of using the SymPy computer algebra system to automate the intensive math involved with system dynamics analysis.”

To learn more about the Undergraduate Research and Poster Symposium, visit: http://www.purdue.edu/research/Ugrad/index.php

Pictured: Joseph Lorenzetti