About Me
Flavia Causa is currently a Ph.D. Student in Industrial Engineering at the University of Naples "Federico II". Her research interests focus on Navigation and Guidance of Aerospace Platforms.
Since her graduation on February 2015, she has been collaborating with the University of Naples "Federico II" as research fellow. During this period she developed Navigation algorithms in MATLAB/Simulink for both Aerial and Space Platforms. Satellite Navigation activity includes Baseline determination of formation flying LEO platforms with GNSS system.
As she approached to her studies, Flavia has always been fond of unmanned vehicles. The most of her past and current research activities deal with UAV. She has developed a navigation filter for a small UAV in a project funded by Regione Campania, and then she has partecipated to the preliminary concept design of an unmanned vehicle for MARS exploration in collaboration with the European Space Agency. In addition to that, she used her skills on baseline determination via GPS measurements for cooperative navigation of terrestrial UAVs. Her passion in this field traced the structure of her Ph.D. topic that deals with Planning Strategies for UAVs Cooperative Systems.
  • Date of Birth 18-11-1991
  • Nationality Italian

Academic Timeline

16-10-2012
Bachelor Degree Graduation
University of Naples "Federico II"
05-02-2015
Master Degree Graduation
University of Naples "Federico II"
27-04-2015 → 01-05-2015
Professional Education Course Guidance, Navigation and Control: Theory and Techniques
Georgia Institute of Technology
01-04-2015 → 31-03-2016
Research Fellow
University of Naples "Parthenope"
01-04-2016 → 31-01-2017
Research Fellow
University of Naples "Federico II"
01-02-2017 →
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Naples "Federico II"
10-02-2018 → 10-08-2018
Visiting Research Student
Autonomous System Laboratory (ETH), Zurich

Research Activities

Formation Geometries for cooperative navigation in GPS challenging environments

Status: on going

Navigation in GPS challening environment could be enhanced by father/son strategy that exploits both cooperative and visual aided navigation. It is assumed the son vehicle to fly inside a GNSS challenging environment. The father vehicle outside the GNSS challenging zone could estimate its position with high accuracy and send it to the son, that could improve its state estimation by using a visual device t identify the father. It is assumed father and son to be always in LOS. This study focuses on the definition of the best father/son geometry to improve son state estimation

Cooperative Planning for UAV Swarms

Status: on going

This project is focused on the path planning and task assignment of UAV swarms in GNSS denied environments. Father/Son strategy is used to improve the navigation state of the son during its flight in the denied zone. Father vehicle must be in line of sight with the son during the operation in the GNSS challenging area, remaining outside this area. Task assigment accounts to guarantee the required number of father is in LOS with the son, and accounts for father son synchronization

Cooperative Navigation of UAVs

Status: on going

Attitude and positioning estimation of UAV platforms can be enhanced with cooperative measurements. This study uses CDGPS and visual measurements in a TRIAD filter to improve the knowledge of UAVs attitude

GPS Baseline Determination

Status: completed

The flight of Satellites in Formation requires a precise relative positioning knowlegde. CDGPS filter are used for this purpose allowing to achieve a centrimetric accuracy in baseline estimation. This research is focused on improving the baseline accuracy. Accurate ionospheric model suitable for on-board processing has been developed for this purpose.

Martian Aerial drone

Status: completed

Several studies in the open literature suggest that the next stages of Mars exploration will take advantage of the adoption of aerial drones since they can overcome some limitations inherent to rovers, such as the limited mobility and the difficulty to explore rough terrains or canyons. This studies is focused on the prelimiray project of a small martian aerial drone that can be carried on Mars with vega launcher.

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Publications

 Journal Publications

  1. F. Causa, A. Renga, and M. Grassi, Robust filter setting in GPS-based relative positioning of small-satellite LEO formations, Adv. Sp. Res. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2018.03.020.
  2. A. Renga, F. Causa, U. Tancredi, and M. Grassi, Accurate ionospheric delay model for real-time GPS-based positioning of LEO satellites using horizontal VTEC gradient estimation , GPS Solut., vol. 22, no. 2, p. 46, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-018-0710-5.
  3. E. Fantino, M. Grassi, P. Pasolini, F. Causa, C. Molfese, R. Aurigemma, N. Cimminiello, D. de la Torre Sangrá, P. Dell'Aversana, F. Esposito, L. Gramiccia, F. Paudice, F. Punzo, I. Roma, R. Savino and G. Zuppardi, The Small Mars System, Acta Astronaut., vol. 137, pp.168-181, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.04.024.

 Conference Papers

  1. F. Causa, A. R. Vetrella, G. Fasano, and D. Accardo, Multi-UAV Formation Geometries for Cooperative Navigation in GNSS-challenging Environments, Accepted for oral presentation at IEEE/ION PLANS 2018 April 23 - 26, 2018 Monterey, CA, 2018.
  2. F. Causa, A. Renga, M. Grassi, Ionosphere-gradient based filtering approach for precise relative navigation in LEO, in 4th IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for AeroSpace, MetroAeroSpace 2017 - Proceedings, 2017, pp. 56-61. https://doi.org/10.1109/MetroAeroSpace.2017.7999538.
  4. A. R. Vetrella, F. Causa, A. Renga, G. Fasano, D. Accardo, M. Grassi, Flight Demonstration of Multi-UAV CDGPS and Vision-Based Sensing for High Accuracy Attitude Estimation, in 2017 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2017, pp. 237-246. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUAS.2017.7991378.
  6. P. Pasolini, R. Aurigemma, F. Causa, N. Cimminiello, D. de La Torre Sangrá, P. Dell'Aversana, F. Esposito, E. Fantino, L. Gramiccia, M. Grassi, G. Lanzante, C. Molfese, F. Punzo, I. Roma, R. Savino, G. Zuppardi, Small Mars satellite: A low-cost system for Mars exploration, Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC 2016
  8. E. Fantino, R. Aurigemma, F. Causa, N. Cimminiello, D. de La Torre Sangrá, P. Dell'Aversana, F. Esposito, L. Gramiccia, M. Grassi, C. Molfese, P. Pasolini, F. Paudice, F. Punzo, R. Savino, G. Zuppardi, The Small Mars Satellite: A European small-size Mars lander, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Systems & Cuncurrent Engineering for Space Applications, SECESA 2016