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Inna Sharf

Title: 
Professor
Inna Sharf
Contact Information
Address: 

Macdonald Engineering Building, Room 146

 

Email address: 
inna.sharf [at] mcgill.ca
Phone: 
514-398-1711
Link(s): 
Aerospace Mechatronics Lab
Degree(s): 

Ph.D. University of Toronto
B.ASc. University of Toronto

Courses: 

MECH 210: Mechanics 1 (2 Credits)
MECH 220: Mechanics 2 (4 Credits)
MECH 403D1: Thesis (Honours) (3 Credits)
MECH 403D2: Thesis (Honours) (3 Credits)
MECH 404: Honours Thesis 2 (3 Credits)
MECH 412: System Dynamics and Control (3 Credits)
MECH 513: Control Systems (3 Credits)
MECH 572: Introduction to Robotics (3 Credits)

Research areas: 
Dynamics and Control
Selected publications: 
  • Song, H. and I. Sharf, "Stability-constrained Mobile Manipulation Planning on Rough Terrain,'' Robotica, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263574722000777, 2022.
  • Wehbeh, J. and I. Sharf, "An MPC Formulation on SO(3) for a Quadrotor with Bidirectional Thrust and Nonlinear Thrust Constraints," Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol. 7, pp. 4945-4952. 2022.
  • Tin, F.E., Borowczyk, A., Sharf, I. and M. Nahon, "Turn Decisions for Autonomous Thermalling of Unmanned Aerial Gliders,'' Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems: Theory and Applications, Vol. 104, 2022.
  • Eskandarpour, A. and I. Sharf, "A constrained error-based MPC for path following of quadrotor with stability analysis,'' Nonlinear Dynamics, Vol. 99(2), pp. 899-918, 2020.
  • Battiston, A., Sharf, I. and M. Nahon, "Attitude estimation for collision recovery of a quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicle,'' International Journal of Robotics Research, 38(10-11), pp. 1286-1306, 2019.
  • Jorgensen, M.K. and I. Sharf, "Effect of Release Conditions on Casualty Risk Factor in Uncontrolled Re-entry of Large Space Debris,'' Advances in Space Research, Vol. 68, pp. 25-42, 2021.
  • Hu, Y., Sharf, I. and L. Chen, "Distributed Orbit Determination and Observability Analysis for Satellite Constellations with Angles-Only Measurements,'' Automatica, Vol. 129, pp. 1-11, 2021.
  • Sagnières L. B. M. and I. Sharf, "Long-term rotational motion analysis and comparison to observations of the inoperative Envisat," Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, Vol. 42(2), pp. 364-376, 2019.
  • Botta, E.M., I. Sharf, and A.K. Misra. "Contact Dynamics Modeling and Simulation of Tether Nets for Space-Debris Capture,'' Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 110-123, 2017.
  • Harmat A., Trentini M. and I. Sharf, "Multi-Camera Tracking and Mapping for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Unstructured Environments," Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, Vol. 78, No. 2, pp. 291-317, 2015.
  • Sharf, I., A. Wolf and MB Rubin, “Arithmetic and Geometric Solutions for Average Rigid-body Rotation,” Mechanism and Machine Theory, Vol. 45, No. 9, pp. 1239-1251, 2010.
  • Verscheure, D., I. Sharf, H. Bruyninckx, J. Swevers and J. De Schutter, “Identification of Contact Dynamics Parameters from Stiff Multi-point Contact Robotic Operations,” International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 367-385, 2010.

 Conference Presentations/Papers

  • Masse, C., Sharf, I. and F. Deleflie, "SRP-J2 resonances in low Earth orbits for objects with a time-variant area-to-mass ratio,'' Proceedings of the 31st AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting, AAS 21-375, virtual, January, 2021.
  • Safaei, A. and I. Sharf, "Velocity estimation for UAVs using ultra wide-band system,'' 2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2021, pp. 202–209, virtual, 2021.
  • El Tin, F., Patience, C., Borowczyk, A., Nahon, M. and I. Sharf, "Exploitation of Thermals in Powered and Unpowered Flight of Autonomous Gliders,'' 2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2021, pp. 1089–1095, virtual, 2021.
  • Maalouly, A., Sharf, I. and I. Mantegh, "Geometrically Based Collision Avoidance for Quadrotors under Short Sensing Distance Conditions,'' 2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2021, pp. 1096–1105, virtual, 2021.
  • Safaei, A. and I. Sharf, "Adaptive model-free formation-tracking controller and observer for collaborative payload transport by four drones,'' 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR), pp. 55-62, New York City, October 25-27, 2021.
  • Masse, C., Sharf, I. and F. Deleflie, "Exploitation of SRP-J2-phi Resonances for De-orbitation of Space Objects with Time-Variant Area-to-Mass Ratio,'' Proceedings of the 72th International Astronautical Congress, IAC–21–C1.7.6, Dubai, October 23-26, 2021.
  • Wehbeh, J., Rahman, S. and Sharf, I., "Distributed model predictive control for UAVs collaborative payload transport," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2020, Virtual, Oct. 25-Nov. 25, 2020.
  • Rezaei-Shoshtari, S., Meger, D. and Sharf, I., "Learning the latent space of robot dynamics for cutting interaction inference," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2020, Virtual, Oct. 25-Nov. 25, 2020.
  • Tin, F.E., Borowczyk, A., Sharf, I. and M. Nahon, "Turn Decision-Making for Improved Autonomous Thermalling of Unmanned Aerial Gliders," 2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2020, Virtual, Sept. 1-4, 9213839, pp. 1368-1375, 2020.
  • Jothiraj, W., Sharf, I., Nahon, M., "Control allocation of bidirectional thrust quadrotor subject to actuator constraints," 2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2020, Virtual, Sept. 1-4, 8798234, pp. 932-938, 2020.
  • H. Song and I. Sharf, "Time Optimal Motion Planning with ZMP Stability Constraint for Timber Manipulation," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA2020, Virtual, May 31-Aug. 31, pp. 4934-4940, 2020.
  • Tin, F.E., Sharf, I. and M. Nahon, "Guidance of unmanned aerial gliders for wildfire surveillance," 2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum, Orlando, Jan. 6-10, Vol. 1 PartF, 2020.
  • Rezaei-Shoshtari, S., Meger, D. and Sharf, I., "Cascaded Gaussian Processes for Data-efficient Robot Dynamics Learning," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2019, Macau, Nov. 4-8, pp. 6871-6877, 2019.
  • Miles, C., Botta, E.M. and I. Sharf, “Simulation and Tension Control of a Tether-Actuated Closing Mechanism for Net-Based Capture of Space Debris,” 70th International Astronautical Congress, Washington DC, Oct. 21-25, 2019.
  • Jothiraj, W., Miles, C., Bulka, E., Sharf, I., Nahon, M., "Enabling bidirectional thrust for aggressive and inverted quadrotor flight," 2019 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2019, Atlanta, June 11-14, 8798234, pp. 534-541, 2019.
Current research: 
  • Robotics and automation of tree-harvesting machinery: trajectory and path planning  (in collaboration with FPInnovations)
  • Long-term orbit and attitude propagation of space debris; deorbitation strategies for space debris
  • On-orbit servicing using CubeSat servicer
  • Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): dynamic soaring, collaborative payload transport, guidance and control
  • Robotics, Autonomous Systems

 

Areas of interest: 

Research laboratory: Aerospace Mechatronics Laboratory

Areas of expertise: 

Dynamics, control, guidance, estimation, and motion planning of robotic systems

Space robotics and systems: space manipulators, orbit and attitude propagation of spacecraft, debris removal and de-orbitation, on-orbit servicing

Unmanned aerial vehicles: dynamics, navigation and control of small UAVs (quadrotors, indoor airships)

Forestry robotics: motion planning for operation of tree-harvesting machinery

Multibody systems: contact dynamics, modeling, simulation, parameter identification.

Robotic and mechatronic systems: system design and integration

 

Projects: 

Research Area 1: Robotics and automation of tree-harvesting machinery: trajectory and path planning 

This work is carried out in collaboration with FPInnovations. The overarching objective is to increase the intelligence and autonomy of tree-harvesting machines. We are looking at problems related to automating certain aspects of operation of these machines as well as providing assistance to the operators.

We are currently working on:

a) Vision-based grasp planning for forwarder machine using learning approaches

b) Trajectory planning and control for sway damping of forwarder end-effector

c) Motion planning for tree-harvesters under dynamic stability constraints

d) Shared autonomy design for operation of tree-harvesting machines

 

Research Area 2: Space Debris De-Orbitation and On-orbit Servicing

We are exploring the feasibility of exploiting natural resonance phenomena to achieve faster de-orbitation of space debris.

We are investigating the use of CubeSat servicer equipped with low-degree-of-freedom manipulator arm to achieve basic servicing tasks such as parts insertion, deployment anomaly correction and opening a valve. 

 

Research Area 3: Regenerative Dynamic Soaring

We are investigating the feasibility of dynamic soaring and regeneration during a soaring maneuver with a glider equipped with a motorized propeller, to enable long-duration flight.

 

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