Design, development and testing of fault-tolerant avionic control of a Hyperloop pod

This work proposes a design for a fault-tolerant avionic system for an Hyperloop Pod. The avionic system is tailored to control the specific hardware available on the pod. Once hardware requirements have been defined, a suitable software hierarchy is defined. Hyerarchical-dependent software routines are running simultaneously each characterized by a specific and different task. In this respect, each avionic control must be robust with respect to the loss of any sensor or actuator. Every actuator has been embedded with a suitable feedback, which allows the system to have a unique and accurate actuation. Timeouts and hearbeat check methods have been implemented in order to detect a sensor fault. The most important tasks, achieved by the software, are the Navigation system and the Flight Controller. The Navigation system is the one responsible of estimating the position of the pod along the Hyperloop tube. This exploits data from three different sensors, which are fed into a linear state estimation algorithm based on the linear weighted least square method. The Flight Controller allows the pod to be driven in two modes: the autopilot mode and the manual mode. In Autopilot mode, the navigation system is used in order to understand when to trigger a state transition, thus passing from cruising to braking. While in manual mode, the operator is allowed to activate any system independently. The design has been implemented on the EPFLoop Hyperloop Pod and extensively tested on three different test conditions. 1. The pod has been tested on a custom inertia flying wheel test bench. 2. On a test rail track 60m long, located at EPFL. 3. In the SpaceX Hyperloop Infrastructure, located in Hawthorne, USA. On the custom inertia flying wheel test bench, two main tests have been completed in order to fully evaluate the max acceleration achievable, the secondary braking system and the High Voltage battery pack. Those tests are a maximum speed test and a maximum torque test. On the short test rail track the Flight Controller has been debugged and validated, together with the navigation system. While on the SpaceX Hyperloop it has been possible to test the pod at maximum speed and maximum torque, starting from a reasonable setpoint and gradually stepping up with performance. With respect to these three testing conditions, the pod and its avionics performance are illustrated and discussed.