Masayuki SATO

Masayuki Sato was born in Japan in 1973. He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in aerospace engineering from Nagoya University in 1995 and 1997, respectively, and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2009. He worked for National Aerospace Laboratory (presently, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) as a researcher since 1997, i.e., over 25 years. He started working as a full professor at Kumamoto university from February 2023, then started working for Kyushu Institute of Technology from October 2025. His research interests include robust semi-definite programming, robust/gain-scheduled control, sliding mode control, and their applications to flight controllers. 

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He has a lot of experience in flight controller design. In particular, In-Flight Simulation (IFS) controller design and practical flight controller design for UAVs, because he was involved in flight controller design for an IFS called MuPAL-α and was also involved in several UAV programs, e.g., Quad-Tilt Wing UAV (QTWUAV), Unmanned Airplane for Radiation Monitoring System (UARMS), solar plane, etc. in JAXA. 

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He had several research projects with private companies and universities. One of the most impressive collaborations is the collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industry (MHI) Ltd. on the evaluation of handling quality for a small airplane. The handling characteristics of a virtual airplane was realized using the IFS function of MuPAL-α by only an appropriately designed feedforward controller, and flight tests in approach phase were conducted around Noto airport. 

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He was one of the Principal Investigators (PI) in "VISION"(Validation of Integrated Safety-enhanced Intelligent flight cONtrol) project which was an EU-JP international collaborative research project conducted from March 2016 to August 2019 in the framework of European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program "No. 690 811" and  Japan New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization program "No. 062800".