Inverse Optimal Velocity Field Control of an Outdoor Blimp Robot – Blimp Surveillance Systems for Rescue –

Abstract

A surveillance system is required to gather the suffering information in the stricken area safely and quickly after natural disasters. An autonomous blimp is the best option for this purpose. Inverse optimal velocity field control is proposed for the blimp to keep a desired trajectory. The desired trajectory based on velocity field is designed, and inverse optimal tracking control is applied to be robust to input uncertainties. The transient performance to the desired trajectory is very important to fly smoothly along the contour, because the blimp is affected by wind easily. The inverse optimal control is expected to improve the robustness to uncertainties of various dynamic parameters. Some experiments are performed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method by using an outdoor blimp whose length is 12.2m.