Revisiting the paper helicopter project using an adaptive surrogate-based approach

Victor Picheny (1) , Rodolphe Le Riche (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

1 MIAT INRA - Unité de Mathématiques et Informatique Appliquées de Toulouse
2 LIMOS - Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Modélisation et d'Optimisation des Systèmes
3 Mines Saint-Étienne MSE - École des Mines de Saint-Étienne
4 FAYOL-ENSMSE - Institut Henri Fayol
5 FAYOL-ENSMSE - Département Génie mathématique et industriel
6 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

The paper helicopter project has been given to graduate students of the French engineering school Ecole des Mines de Saint Etienne, as a practical work of two lectures: design of experiments and global optimization. The project consists of designing a very simplified paper helicopter for maximum flying time. Its main difficulty lies in the very high level of uncertainty, as flying times for the same design can vary very substantially due to experimental conditions or manufacturing imprecisions. The students were asked to combine design of experiments and surrogate modeling techniques (in order to deal with noise) with global optimization strategies. Despite its apparent simplicity, the project was found quite challenging and the strategies experimented by students were eventually close to what would require a real-case problem.

Mots clés: Teaching; optimization; Design of experiments

Domaines: Optimisation et contrôle [math.OC]; Applications [stat.AP]

Victor Picheny, Rodolphe Le Riche. Revisiting the paper helicopter project using an adaptive surrogate-based approach. [University works] INRA MIA-T; Ecole des Mines de Saint Etienne (EMSE). 2015. ⟨hal-01116601⟩