John E. Hurtado

Associate Professor
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Texas A&M University   

(also see hurtado at dnc.tamu.edu/wiki)

 

Current interests, The past, Publications, Animations, Teaching, Collaborators, Students, Snapshots & Albums, Other, Columnists

 

ESC.  A new Lulu book is ready!  "Elements of Spacecraft Control" is my latest writing project.  See it here.

 

CONGRATULATIONS!  Lesley Weitz successfully defended her PhD dissertation and graduated in May.  She has accepted a research position with the MITRE Corporation beginning in the fall of 2009.

 

SUMMER 2009.  CO Springs (Horses, Rafting, Hiking, Pikes Peak & Zoo).

 

HOT.  Cisco's first football game.  See this attached text, too. 

 

 


Current interests

Theoretical Mechanics, Structural Dynamics, Games, Controls, & Dynamics

The past

Summary

Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering, TAMU, 1995.  Some New Methods for Optimal Control of Constrained Dynamical Systems.  Advised by J.L. Junkins.

Publications & presentations

Conference Papers, Journal Articles, In Review & In Preparation

 

Invited presentations:

@JSC (07.07.2004) Some aspects of N-Dim ...

@Cornell (11.15.2005) The lowdown on motion of ...

@TAMU (04.18.2006) A new dimension to ... 

@Sandia (07.26.2006) Coordinate choices in ...

 

Self-Published Lecture Notes & Books.  (See Lulu Collection here)

 

 

 

 

 

Elements of Spacecraft Control

Available from Lulu.com (May 2009)

J.E. Hurtado

(preview)

 

A guide for AERO628, graduate-level spacecraft control

 

{errata}

 

 

 

 

Kinematic and Kinetic Principles

Available from Lulu.com (Jan 2007)

J.E. Hurtado

(preview)

 

A guide for AERO622, graduate-level dynamics.  (Updated in Dec 2007.)

 

 

 

 

A Kinematics and Kinetics Primer

Available from Lulu.com (Aug 2008)

J.E. Hurtado

(preview)

 

A guide for AERO310, junior-level dynamics

 

 

 

Problem Set: A Kinematics and Kinetics Primer

Available from Lulu.com (Aug 2008)

J.E. Hurtado

(preview)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Applied Dynamic Programming for Optimization of Dynamical Systems

SIAM (2005)

(with R.D. Robinett III, D.G. Wilson, & G.R. Eisler)

(preview)

 

 

 

 

 

In preparation

 

Higher Dimensional Rotational and Theoretical Mechanics

(A research monograph)

J.E. Hurtado and A.J. Sinclair

 

 

Book Chapter

 

Appendix H, Hamel Coefficients for the Rotational Motion of a Rigid Body, in H. Schaub and J.L. Junkins, Analytical Mechanics of Space Systems, AIAA (2003).

Animations

          D&See

Teaching

AERO211 Aerospace Engineering Mechanics

AERO310 Aerospace Dynamics

AERO622 Spacecraft Dynamics and Control

AERO627 Principles of Structural Dynamics

AERO628 Advanced Spacecraft Dynamics and Control

AERO6xx AAD, AERO6yy HDM

 

thecourses

history

ratings

graduate-level d&c offerings

Research collaborators

:: Dr. Andrew J. Sinclair (Post Doctoral Visiting Research Scientist, Summer 2005; now Assistant Professor at Auburn)

:: Dr Rajnish Sharma (Assistant Professor at Univ of Alabama)

:: Dr Lesley Weitz (Researcher at the MITRE Corporation)

:: Dr Rush D. Robinett III (Sandia National Laboratories SNL)

:: Dr James D. Turner (Formerly of Dynacs; Director of CASS)

:: Dr Shaun M. Immel (Director of Engineering, ITW Ride Quality Products)

Students

Ph.D.

:: Julie Parish, Motion constants for dynamical systems; applications of the implicit function theorem in dynamics and control

(2008-2009 Amelia Earhart Fellowship; 2005-2008 NSF Fellowship; 2005-2008 NDSEG Fellowship; Department of Homeland Security National Fellowship; 2004 Benjamin and Deanna Smith Scholarship, National Merit Scholar)

 

:: Carolina I Restrepo, Spacecraft reentry controls and analysis

(2008-2009 Amelia Earhart Fellowship; 2005-2008 NSF Fellowship)

 

:: Kevin Brink, Higher-order methods and algorithms in estimation

(NSF GK-12 Mentor, SMART scholarship recipient, Sandia National Laboratories Excellence in Engineering Fellowship)

 

:: Neha Satak, Restricted impulsive control for attitude maneuvers; vision

 

:: Chris Bertinato, Dynamics and control methods for pseudo rigid bodies

 

:: Oscar Palafox (PostDoc)

                                            

M.S.

:: Clark Moody, Supervisor architectures and control for autonomous systems (Co-advised w/ Dr Valasek)

(Boeing Fellowship Award for Summer 2009)

 

:: Kurt Cavalieri, Closed loop control for robotic platforms (Co-advised w/ Dr Junkins)

 

:: Kristen Holmstrom, Rate-free control methods for continuous, flexible systems

(2009-2010 NASA GSRP)

 

:: Davis Castillo

(2007-2008 Texas A&M Graduate Diversity Fellowship)

 

UG

:: NASA Micro-Gravity Team (Travis Cagle, Nathan Cunningham, Lianne Netardus, and Daniel Seitz), experiments to observe the effect that a liquid inside a rotating prism will have on the stability of its rotation about its major, minor, and intermediate axis.  We all know about the stability of near pure spin states for a rigid body (fixed mass distribution), but the experiment intends to observe how this well-known behavior will be affected by a variable mass distribution.  See http://people.tamu.edu/~tcagle/Site/Team.html 

 

Completed Students (23)

Advisement (16) (see OGS Degree Plans)

Fellowship & Scholarship Programs

Snapshots & Albums

Snapshots

shadesofn, Amigos, Collage

 

Albums

 

Casa del Lago 4

Cat's 9th Bday Party

Dodgers vs Astros

Casa del Lago 3

Casa del Lago 2

Julie & Allen Wedding

Aggie Baseball

Casa del Lago 1

Other A&M

courses, calendar, catalogs, aerospace faculty, progress report 2006, epik, aeromail, hrconnect, tamu direct, howdy tamu

Other engineering & science

JPL, MathWorld, AIAA, AAS, Sandia, SpaceDaily, Wikipedia, xkcd

Other other

LA Dodgers, LA Times Sports, Bible, Church, MLB, KSBJ, Our Haikus

Columnists & news

LPittsJr, DBrooks, WSJOpin, WPOpin, WPWriGrp, NYTOpin, OJudson, JTierney, GoogleNews

 

(me & LP, Feb2007)


Contact information:
H.R. Bright Building, Room 706
3141 TAMU
College Station, Texas 77843-3141
TEL 979.845.1659 FAX 979.845.6051
jehurtado@tamu.edu