Agile Design of Unmanned Air Systems

This PhD project is part of the CASCADE programme (led by Southampton and including the universities of Cranfield, Manchester, Bristol, as well as Imperial College), which is built on the idea that a step change in the civil use of aerial robotics (or Unmanned Air Vehicles, UAVs or simply "drones") will deliver significant societal and economic benefits, such as better knowledge of our environment, more efficient logistics and enhanced support of infrastructure. Civil aerial robotics will therefore be a significant market in its own right, and one in which the UK can lead through technology advantage and a healthy operating ecosystem for innovation. The CASCADE programme will deliver the research to underpin these advances, tackling the fundamental roadblocks, technical and regulatory, that limit routine use of aerial robots in science and civil applications. It is this fundamental research activity that this PhD project will form a significant pillar of, tackling the question of how to increase the agility of unmanned platform design processes through the use of parametric geometry modelling and design space control.