Valentin Wüest

Agile and vision-based control for winged drones – Devised & verified control for a complex, bird inspired drone achieving bird-like flight agility in challenging conditions. – Explored and alleviated limitation of novel learning-based control for data-efficient adaptation for drone flight control. – Assessed existing vision-based flight controllers, identified limitations, and realized flexible strategy for high accuracy flight. Leadership and collaboration – Guided master students goal-directed in vision-based control, learning control, and vision-based estimation projects. – Interacted tightly in collaboration with Intel and the RPG (Uni Zürich, Prof Scaramuzza) each resulting in publications.

Studied the quadrotor dynamics, designed, and implemented estimator to obtain inertia properties of a quadrotor in flight.

Assembly & commission of a test bench to determine heat transfer coefficient of a Phase Change Dispersion (PCD) coolant. Design of calibration & verification procedures, execution of complex PCD experiments, and experimental data analysis. Assessment of various energy storage types for applications in aluminum foundry to lower overall power consumption.

Nominee for 2018 IEEE ICRA Best UAV Paper Award Development and physical implementation of a vision-based non-linear control system that allows a UAV to move a suspended payload along an aggressive trajectory, that the system determined to be feasible. In contrast to previous works, we close the loop on the payload, not quadrotor, which allows for unmodeled external disturbances. With this, we are able to execute new motions that take advantage of the slung-load's dynamics, which eventually allows for greater energy and time efficiency.

Inclusion in the Audi Talent Pool for outstanding performance having developed a user-friendly, interactive data analysis tool in Matlab and equipped an electric vehicle with a data logger and sensors, to analyze the occurrence of brake noise pollution such as squealing.

2014 (3 months): Part-time Student Engineer Developed an innovative prototype of an interferometer casing where the separation of optics and electronics allowed for reduced product cost and variable lens use. Communicated effectively with suppliers to obtain part specifications for a compact interferometer scanner design. 2013 (1 month): Engineering Internship II Returned to complete prior work. Finalized the 3D CAD model and technical mechanical drawings of the custom sample holder in order to produce 1st prototype. 2012 (4 months): Engineering Internship I Responsible for the design of a custom sample holder, worked autonomously with regular discussions with management to define project scope and develop ideas. Also, in accordance with ETH's workshop internship requirements, executed practical skills such as soldering of circuit boards and assembly of 19'' control units.

Focus: Robotics, Systems and Control

Focus: Mechatronics