Qiang Shen

Associate Professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronatics,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Research Interest: spacecraft dynamics and control, fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control, complex task trajectory planning, and model identification and recognition

Title: Model-free fault-tolerant control of spacecraft

Abstract: For safety-critical spacecraft control systems, reliability is particularly important as a minor fault in such systems can result in significant control performance degradation or even instability. Moreover, considering the complex space environment, modelling uncertainties, and unexpected component malfunctions, mathematical model of spacecraft may not be available for controller design. In this talk, two mode-free fault-tolerant control frameworks of spacecraft are introduced, where one is based on the supervised Lipschitz interpolation for attitude control and the other is based on off-policy reinforcement learning for formation control. Both learning-based model-free fault-tolerant schemes show that the control performance and reliability of the spacecraft can be improved greatly despite the presence of component faults.

Short-biography: Dr. Qiang Shen is currently a tenure-track associate professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2010 and his Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in 2016. From Nov. 2015 to Nov. 2017, he worked as a Research Scientist at Temasek Laboratories, National University of Singapore. From December 2017 to November 2019, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University. He joined Shanghai Jiao Tong University in December 2019 and was selected for the Shanghai Overseas High-Level Talents Program in September 2020 and received the National Excellent Overseas Student Scholarship in 2016. 
His main research interests include spacecraft dynamics and control, fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control, complex task trajectory planning, and model identification and recognition. In recent years, he has published over 50 academic papers in prestigious journals and conferences in the fields of control and aerospace. He received the Feng Ru Best Paper Award at the 2022 International Conference on Guidance, Navigation and Control (ICGNC).