Description:
This Faculty of Engineering is at the forefront of both basic and applied research, and enjoys international recognition for its work. By focusing on cutting-edge and inter-disciplinary research, the Faculty is experiencing strong growth in its research and postgraduate programmes.
Research activities are supported by quality staff, world-class experimental laboratories, computational facilities and research infrastructure.
The Faculty is research-intensive and is one of the largest contributors to the research income.
Research and teaching in the five academic departments are augmented by six major research Centres/Institutes of international standing. Research groups in these units are funded by various industries and research council programmes such as those of NRF, Thrip, Innovation Fund, etc.
Aerospace Engineering students will be based in the Electronic Systems Lab (ESL)working alongside Professor Herman Steyn who is the group head of all aero and space engineering. His group focus’s strongly on automatic airship control and are very active in satellite systems, airship systems as well as remotely piloted vehicles. They work intensely with industry, which gives interns excellent industrial experience and they will work alongside all the Master's students who are doing their research projects in the Aerospace field. The ESL is also the birth place of Africa's first satellite Sunsat-1 and is the site for the satellite ground station, used to currently do the commissioning of SumbandilaSat (launched Sept 2009), built by SunSpace.
Interns will also have the opportunity to work on the design of an autopilot for an 8 meter electric airship. Further plans include working on the improvement of the gondola design and controllers to automatically fly waypoints.




Requirements:
• Send your current resume and cover letter through to nicky@magister.co.za and mention the following number: 8881. Thank you ! For more information check: www.magister.co.za



Responsabilities:
Internship Description
Duration of Internship: 17 Weeks
Rough Estimation of Time:
1 Week Welcoming Initial Setup/Environment
3 Weeks Gondola Redesign
5 Weeks Additional Modeling, Controller Design, Comparison of results
4 Weeks Embedded Implementation on hardware, HIL simulation if time allows
3 Weeks Report
1 Week Vacation during internship if required.

Internship will comprise of the following tasks:
- Improvement and redesign of airship gondola for improved aerodynamics, to simplify mounting to
airship, as well as provide easy access to batteries and avionics.
- Additional modeling, including external disturbances such as wind to include in airship model.
- Linear controller design for waypoint navigation using classical control techniques with focus on
robustness.
- Evaluation of controllers through simulation (Matlab, Simulink) and comparison to existing fuzzy
logic controllers.
- If time allows - implementation of controllers on hardware, possible hardware in the loop
simulation.
- Any valuable contribution to the project.
- Written report to summarise internship work.