Philippe Rudolph

MSc Student in Robotics & Aerospace · TUM · Controls, Estimation, Rocketry

Education

Technical University of Munich

MSc Robotics, Cognition and Intelligence & MSc Aerospace

Expected 2027
GPA 1.2 Robotics, Cognition and Intelligence
GPA 1.4 Aerospace Engineering
Award TUM Deutschlandstipendium — Oct 2025–present
Community

Student Council of Aerospace and Geodesy — Oct 2022–present

Co-host & audio engineer, podcast "On Air – Actually Rocket Science"

Competition

1st place — Robotics Hackathon 2022

2nd place — TUM Science Hackathon 2022

Technical University of Munich

BSc Aerospace Engineering

August 2025
GPA 1.8 Top 5% of cohort

Luisen-Gymnasium Düsseldorf

Abitur & French Baccalaureate — Top of Class

June 2021
Abitur GPA 1.2 Bac GPA 1.3

Work & Research

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Vision-Based State Estimation for Extraplanetary Exploration

Munich

Dec 2025–Present
  • Literature review of Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) methods
  • Extended VIO-based state estimation pipeline for UAV navigation in C++ and ROS2

WARR Rocketry

Project, Controls & Software Lead

Munich

Jun 2024–Present
  • Leading 60+ students to build Germany's first student-built bi-liquid TVC Hopper
  • Developed Geometric Controller, INDI and online RTI NMPC trajectory optimizer
  • Full software stack in C++ with ROS2 wrapper
  • Thrust curve estimation tool and high-fidelity Simulink model

AVILUS

Testing Engineer

Munich · Aerospace startup (~50 employees), certified dual-use drones

May 2024–May 2025
  • Co-developed MATLAB OOP Model-in-the-Loop (MiL) testing toolbox
  • Designed and automated MiL test cases in MATLAB/Simulink
  • Modeled sensors for ground detection; analyzed flight data with Python

Institute of Flight System Dynamics, TUM

Research Assistant

Oct 2023–Oct 2024
  • Co-developer of Online 3D Trajectory Generation tool for UAVs
  • Co-authored two published papers

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant

Control and Simulation of Rocket-Hopper Demonstrator — TUM

Dec 2025–Feb 2026
Teaching Assistant

Automatic Control Engineering — TUM

Apr 2024–Sep 2024
Teaching Assistant

Basic Mathematics & Differential and Integral Calculus — TUM

May 2022–Mar 2023

Skills

Programming

C++ Python MATLAB/Simulink Julia

Frameworks

ROS2 Gazebo Eigen OpenCV PyTorch NumPy Pandas CasADi Acados

Hardware

Raspberry Pi 4/5 ESP32 STM32 Arduino Uno

Other

Linux Git LaTeX Onshape (CAD)

Languages & Interests

Languages

English Fluent French Fluent German Fluent Spanish B1 Russian A2 Japanese A1

Interests

Climbing / Bouldering · Music production & piano · Reading (favourite: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Publications

Mbikayi et al. (2024). "Online Deterministic 3D Trajectory Generation…" Aerospace 11(2):157.

doi:10.3390/aerospace11020157 ↗

Mbikayi et al. (2025). "Relative kinematics for a jerk-level trajectory generation system." CEAS Aeronautical Journal.

doi:10.1007/s13272-025-00861-y ↗