Yevhenii Jack Kovryzhenko

Risk Reduction Test Vehicle (RRTV) was developed for a joint project with Transcend Air Corporation, funded by the US Air Force Agility Prime Program. It is a tilt-wing aircraft with wingtip propellers and a tail-fan arrangement for pitch control in hover. We have designed and developed the airframe to be 80% 3D-printable, and reduced the total cost of the test vehicle from over $20K down to under $3K. This was also my first introduction to PX4 Autopilot development and code generation from Simulink. I have developed a custom I/O framework for PX4 that we have successfully used for in-lab and outdoor flight testing of RRTV and quadrotor vehicles.

"Twelve stations placed in a to-be-found Dyson ring were tasked to build the mega-structure. Ten spacecraft starting from the Earth had to tour the asteroid belt to activate as many asteroids as possible using minimal propellant consumption. Each activated asteroid had to complete a low-thrust, constant acceleration spiral aimed at reaching a chosen target station replenishing its building material, and prepare the trajectory plan in less than a month. Known as the Dyson Sphere, the idea was first concocted by mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960."

I was a part of the Auburn University team (AU-LU) that participated in the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition in 2022. We have competed against 94 teams from all around the world, including well-known space agencies, and placed 17th in the competition on our first attempt. I worked on the beam search algorithm and this was the very first time we all had to work with big data. This was a great learning experience and a lot of fun.

The goal of this project was to design, implement, and test a minimal autopilot firmware for all of the in-lab activities. I started working on this during my last year of undergraduate studies and continued to develop it during my first year of graduate studies. This was also the beginning of my graduate research with Dr. Taheri at the ACELab.

The quadrotor control was a standard cascaded PID control. The automated guidance was achieved through a minimum-snap trajectory computed off-board and loaded into the autopilot's memory on request. I have taken a standard minimum-snap polynomial trajectory optimization algorithm and implemented a Finite Fourier Series equivalent. I have also implemented a simple communication protocol from scratch to send motion capture data to the drone and issue high-level commands like take-off, land, and follow a trajectory. Although I have adopted MAVLINk in all my later works, this has been a great learning experience in developing a custom communication protocol.

The goal of this project was to design, implement, and test propulsion and flight control systems for a 40-foot-long airship, which would serve as a demonstrator and test bed for a larger full-scale vehicle. I was responsible for the hardware integration and testing of the propulsion control system.

The control of the airship was through four 2-axis gimballed propulsors. The control was done manually using a hand-help radio controller with an on-board autopilot. The flight firmware was a derivate of the early version of the ACEPilot adapted for gimbaled thrust airships. The project concluded with a successful flight demonstration at Skyborne’s facility in Wewahitchka, FL on September 29, 2021.

"Blue Oregano has a goal of developing, designing, and constructing a launch vehicle capable of sending up to 50 metric tons of un-crewed payload into low Earth orbit. Blue Oregano's mission is to provide the world with a cost-effective and successful launch vehicle to aid in supplying future space travelers with goods that will enhance their quality of life. Blue Oregano hopes to get ahead of the industry by shipping luxury items into space. Blue Oregano hopes to be the primary launch provider in the newly developed space trade system and spur a modern-day silk road. To achieve this goal, the team at Blue Oregano has begun work towards a new program coined Advanced Rocket Trade Enterprise: Mars International Space Station (ARTEMISS). The ARTEMIS program will bring around a new launch vehicle to spark the beginning of the space fairing trade industry. This new launch vehicle will be called Genesis 1. This launch vehicle will consist of two stages. Both stages will be powered by liquid rocket engines that provide ample thrust to get the vehicle payloads into orbit. The approach to this design was to maximize efficiency by minimizing mass and optimizing the ascent trajectory of the vehicle."

This was my last year senior design project that completed my undergraduate studies at Auburn University. This was a group effort with my fellow peers from AURA, but feel free to check out the individual effort breakdown to see what parts I was responsible for during the project.

During my undergraduate years at Auburn University, I was a member of the Auburn University Rocketry Association (AURA) 2018-2021. This is where I first learned about real engineering, rocket science, and applied aerodynamics. I was developing CAD models for the entire rocket, performing CFD analysis in ANSYS Fluent, and SolidWords, and later using Auburn University's supercomputer to run locally-developed CFD algorithms. I was also the only member of AURA (for several years) who helped with second-level certification in high-power rocketry.

I was also the embedded systems team lead (2019-2021) and we were responsible for the development of the avionics module for the rocket. Part of the NASA Student Launch competition challenges was to fly the rocket to a particular altitude and the score was based on how far your target (designed) apogee was different from the actual apogee as measured by the certified on-board altimeter. My team was the first at Auburn University to implement and successfully fly the active braking system that allowed in-flight course adjustments, data collection, and remote initiation/disarming. As an Aerospace Engineer with no software background, this was my first introduction to embedded C programming, real-time control, and estimation.

Since 2021, I have served as the President of the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) at Auburn University, the Auburn's chapter of the world's leading non-profit organization dedicated to advancing vertical flight technology.

When I joined the Auburn chapter in 2021, it was a small group with fewer than seven members. Under my leadership, the chapter has grown to over 30 members and achieved permanent organization status. We have actively participated in VFS competitions, hosted guest speakers, and organized workshops and seminars to engage Auburn students interested in modern vertical flight.

I have been actively involved in the organization and execution of drone flight demonstrations for the ACELab's outreach events. These events are designed to introduce local high school students to the field of aerospace engineering and inspire them to pursue careers in STEM.

We lead department tours, provide hands-on demonstrations, and host interactive workshops. We hosted the Auburn University Aviation Camp and E-Day events, where we showcased our research and engaged with the prospective students, family and faculty.