Human pointing motion during interaction with an autonomous blimp

Abstract

We investigate the interaction between a human and a miniature autonomous blimp using a wand as pointing device. The wand movement generated by the human is followed by the blimp through a tracking controller. The Vector Integration to Endpoint (VITE) model, previously applied to human–computer interface (HCI), has been applied to model the human generated wand movement when interacting with the blimp. We show that the closed-loop human–blimp dynamics are exponentially stable. Similar to HCI using computer mouse, overshoot motion of the blimp has been observed. The VITE model can be viewed as a special reset controller used by the human to generate wand movements that effectively reduce the overshoot of blimp motion. Moreover, we have observed undershoot motion of the blimp due to its inertia. The asymptotic stability of the human–blimp dynamics is beneficial towards tolerating the undershoot motion of the blimp.