Duncan Campbell - The Flight Assist System

Duncan Campbell
Queensland University of Technology
Australia

Abstract

The Flight Assist System (FAS) is a demonstrator project assisting Ergon Energy in commercial development of one of the outcomes of a three year research project which focussed on business improvement applications. The success of this research project was an incentive for Ergon Energy to launch the Remote Observation, Automated Modelling & Economic Simulation (ROAMES) project which aims to develop advanced airborne vegetation management system. Ergon Energy’s distribution area covers 150,000 kilometres of network and will be surveyed by aircraft equipped with a LiDAR sensor. The FAS was developed to reduce pilot workload and facilitate accurate capturing of data. It provides lateral navigation to the aircraft while the pilot controls speed and altitude. Through the use of FAS it is possible to operate for durations up to four hours.

Biography

Prof. Dr. Duncan Campbell is the Director of the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA), a joint venture between Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Connected with the Robotics and Aerospace Systems discipline group at QUT, and the CSIRO ICT Centre, ARCAA has a Queensland Government co-funded purpose built facility located in the Da Vinci Precinct at Brisbane Airport. Duncan is an Associate Professor at QUT, with over 25 years of research leadership in control and automation, almost 100 peer reviewed scholarly publications, and has been associated with ARCAA since its inception. He has served as IEEE Qld Chair for the joint chapters of Control Systems and Robotics and Automation (2008-2009). Duncan has many international collaborations in both automation research, and engineering education. Passionate about educating our engineers for the future, he was elected President of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) in 2011, and leads the Australian and New Zealand regional group of the global CDIO Initiative.