Issue 37 Unmanned Systems Technology April/May 2021 Einride next-gen Pod l Battery technology l Dive Technologies AUV-Kit l UGVs insight l Vanguard EFI/ETC vee twins l Icarus Swarms l Transponders l Sonobot 5 l IDEX 2021 report

19 During his secondary school education he moved temporarily to Germany, to perfect his German language skills, and he also gained a considerable appreciation for German cultural achievements and their education system. Eventually he moved back to Germany, to his present-day home and place of work in Bruchsal, south-west Germany. During his earlier stay he also discovered some activities that were new not only to himself but to western Europe in general. These included computer programming, with his secondary school’s Tandy TRS 80 desktop computers being key to his getting to grips with it. University work Dr Coville’s penchant for programming would serve him well in his university education, which ran from 1984 to 1992. After finishing school at the Lycee Pasteur, he enrolled in an Electronics & Mechanics undergraduate degree course at the Universite Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, a public research university also known then as ‘Paris 6’ but now merged into Sorbonne University. “My favourite subjects there were mathematics, software and just about anything theoretical,” he recounts, with his favoured examples of the lattermost area being control theory, multi-body mechanics, non-linear optimisations and computer vision. “Two especially interesting projects from my undergraduate years come to mind. The first was one that aimed to define an obstacle detection system for an autonomous car.” During that project, he learned a lot about teamwork and team dynamics, and the importance of always valuing scientific evidence even if it did not fit initial expectations. “The second project was supporting a PhD student as they derived models for mixed force/position control in robotic arms. That inspired me to do my own PhD, in Automatic Control & Robotics.” Dr Coville began his PhD in 1989. The programme would take three years, and during that time he particularly enjoyed the sub-topics of control theory and game theory. “I also looked into neural networks, but the computational power we had was much too low to do anything meaningful with them at the time,” he says. His research culminated in a dissertation on developing a theoretical framework to tackle vibrations in an optomechanical system. “It was very rewarding to witness the drastic improvement in system performances based on my approach,” he says. “And as much as I loved how challenging and interesting that technology was, I realised during that time that the purpose of the technology and how the product will be used in the end matters just as much to me.” Early career For the first eight years after Paris 6, Dr Coville worked as a technician for military systems, being drawn to the high level of technical challenges they presented. “I began working with Osiris sensors on Eurocopter Tiger helicopters, and eventually moved to designing flight controls for the Bombardier Dr Arnaud Coville | In conversation Unmanned Systems Technology | April/May 2021 Volocopter is currently testing and developing its urban air taxis across several Asian and European cities (Images courtesy of Volocopter) Volocopter is also using its preferred electrical and aerospace architecture in the VoloDrone UAV (pictured here with a John Deere agricultural sprayer payload)