Postdoc position at University Paris-South 11, Orsay, France : FDIR for autonomous space vehicles

Post-doc position on FDIR in autonomous space vehicles The research fits into the framework of the SIRASAS (Innovative and robust strategies for spacecraft autonomy, https://extranet.ims-bordeaux.fr/External/SIRASAS) project, which is supported by the Research Foundation for Aeronautics and Space (FRAE) and agreed by the competitiveness pole AESE (Aerospace Valley, strategic activity domain Embedded Systems, federated program Diagnosis). It received funding for 3 years from November 2007. SIRASAS is coordinated by IMS (Bordeaux) and the partners are: SATIE (ENS Cachan), LAAS-CNRS (Toulouse), CRAN (Nancy), LRI (Univ. Paris-Sud, Orsay), ONERA (Toulouse), CNES (Toulouse), Airbus France (Toulouse) and Thales Alenia Space (Cannes). The objective of the project is to promote innovative and robust technologies that could significantly increase spacecraft autonomy. It addresses the model-based Fault Detection, Identification and Recovery (FDIR) challenges for G&C (Guidance and Control). The actions undertaken within SIRASAS aim at overcoming the dead zone between the scientific advanced methods proposed by the academic and research communities and the technological solutions demanded by the aerospace industry, with stringent operational constraints. More precisely, in the space domain, the objective is to reduce needs for permanent control by ground operators, to equip the space system with autonomous FDIR capacities and to increase the availability of the system. The space application scenario is the terminal phase of rendez-vous for the Mars Sample Return mission, for which simulators in Simulink are available. During the two first years of the project, solutions for early fault detection and location in this scenario have been designed by the partners. During this third year, LRI will work in cooperation with LAAS and ONERA on general FDIR techniques in a context of autonomy, focusing on functional reconfiguration. A report will be produced, synthesizing the existing works, in particular those from NASA (Livingstone, HYDE), and proposing realistic solutions or lines of research. The post-doc will have to study existing works, to propose embedded autonomous FDIR functions and to test some of them with available simulators. He/she will have to do this in tight collaboration with LAAS and ONERA. He/she will work in the IASI (Artificial Intelligence and Inference Systems: http://www.lri.fr/equipe.php?eq=8) research group of LRI, the laboratory of Computer Science of the University Paris-Sud 11 and CNRS, located at Orsay in the South of Paris. IASI is also a joint team with Gemo project of INRIA Saclay - Île-de-France. The responsible of LRI inside this project is Prof. Philippe Dague. Candidates should have: - a PhD thesis in Computer Science or Control Theory; - good knowledge of model-based diagnosis techniques in AI and Control Theory, and of modeling formalisms for discrete-event and hybrid systems; - programming experience in Simulink. Previous knowledge or experience in spacecraft domain would be welcome. The position is available from beginning of January to end of October 2010. Salary is from 2300 euros gross/month. Send your application letter, including CV, thesis reports, publications list and names of referents, by email to philippe.dague@lri.fr For more information, please contact: Philippe Dague LRI IASI, Univ. Paris-Sud, CNRS / INRIA Saclay - Île-de-France Gemo Parc Club Orsay Université 4 rue Jacques Monod, Bât G 91893 Orsay, France Tél : +33 1 72 92 59 88 Fax : +33 1 60 19 69 63 Email : philippe.dague@lri.fr