This image shows Walter Fichter

Walter Fichter

Prof. Dr.-Ing.

Director
Institute of Flight Mechanics and Control

Contact

+49 711 685 67060
 +49 711 685 66670

Pfaffenwaldring 27
70569 Stuttgart
Germany
Room: 2.048

  1. S. Özkurt and W. Fichter, “Gust Reconstruction for Rotorcraft Based on Closed-Loop Shaping,” Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics, 2023, doi: 10.2514/1.G007510.
  2. O. Pfeifle and W. Fichter, “Minimum Power Control Allocation for Incremental Control of Over-Actuated Transition Aircraft,” Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics, vol. 46, no. 2, Art. no. 2, 2023, doi: 10.2514/1.G006929.
  3. S. Notter, F. Schimpf, G. Müller, and W. Fichter, “Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Cross-Country Soaring,” Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics, vol. 46, no. 1, Art. no. 1, 2023, doi: 10.2514/1.G006746.
  4. S. Notter, C. Gall, G. Müller, A. Ahmad, and W. Fichter, “Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach for Integrated Updraft Mapping and Exploitation,” Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics, vol. 46, no. 10, Art. no. 10, 2023, doi: 10.2514/1.G007572.
  5. N. Houba, S. Delchambre, G. Hechenblaikner, T. Ziegler, and W. Fichter, “Time-delay interferometry infinity for tilt-to-length noise estimation in LISA,” Classical and quantum gravity, vol. 40, no. 10, Art. no. 10, 2023, doi: 10.1088/1361-6382/accbfc.
  6. M. R. Schlichting, S. Notter, and W. Fichter, “Long Short-Term Memory for Spatial Encoding in Multi-Agent Path Planning,” Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics, vol. 45, no. 5, Art. no. 5, 2022, doi: 10.2514/1.G006129.
  7. O. Pfeifle, S. Notter, W. Fichter, D. P. Bergmann, J. Denzel, and A. Strohmayer, “Verifying the Effect of Wingtip Propellers on Drag Through In-Flight Measurements,” Journal of aircraft, vol. 59, no. 2, Art. no. 2, 2022, doi: 10.2514/1.C036490.
  8. S. Notter, G. Müller, and W. Fichter, “Integrated Updraft Localization and Exploitation : End-to-End Type Reinforcement Learning Approach,” in Proceedings of the 2022 CEAS EuroGNC conference, in Proceedings of the 2022 CEAS EuroGNC conference. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt, 2022, p. CEAS-GNC-2022-077. [Online]. Available: https://eurognc.ceas.org/archive/EuroGNC2022/html/CEAS-GNC-2022-077.html
  9. N. Houba, S. Delchambre, T. Ziegler, G. Hechenblaikner, and W. Fichter, “LISA spacecraft maneuver design to estimate tilt-to-length noise during gravitational wave events,” Physical Review. D, covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology, vol. 106, no. 2, Art. no. 2, 2022, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.022004.
  10. N. Houba, S. Delchambre, T. Ziegler, and W. Fichter, “Optimal Estimation of Tilt-to-Length Noise for Spaceborne Gravitational-Wave Observatories,” Journal of guidance control and dynamics, vol. 45, no. 6, Art. no. 6, 2022, doi: 10.2514/1.G006064.
  11. R. Geshnizjani and W. Fichter, “Steering Law for Control Moment Gyroscopes with Online Torque Capacity Maximization,” Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics, 2022, doi: 10.2514/1.G005694.
  12. A. Vigneron, S. Delchambre, T. Ziegler, and W. Fichter, “Transient-Suppressing Initialization for Low-Bandwidth Attitude Controllers,” Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics, vol. 44, no. 11, Art. no. 11, 2021, doi: 10.2514/1.G005948.

Walter Fichter is a professor of flight mechanics and controls. He has 17 years of industry experience as a development engineer and project manager in the field of guidance, control, and dynamics with MBB, Dornier (now both Airbus Defence and Space), and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan. In 2015 he spent a Sabbatical at Stanford University. In total, he was involved in the development of six different spacecraft control systems that were or still are operational. He filed about 14 patents. His major personal engineering contributions include:

  • Design and development of a dynamic momentum bias control system for spacecraft. This was a world first and key contribution to the Globalstar satellite constellation.
  • Conception of the functional architecture and navigation and filtering algorithms of a special spaceborne GPS receiver (the MosaicGPS receiver), that can be applied from low Earth to geostationary orbits. This receiver flies on many spacecraft and is being sold to date.
  • The design of the drag-free control system of the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft. This is the world’ s first drag-free system with cubic test masses and one of the most complex control system of all ESA spacecraft.

 In the past 10 years his research interests include autonomous flight and unmanned vehicles, intelligent flight for general aviation aircraft, and dynamics and controls of helicopters.

 Mr. Fichter is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and member of the advisory board of the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. Moreover, he is an active pilot for airplanes (EU PPL/IR, US CPL/IR).

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