Abstract
In this paper, we present the stabilization of an unconventional unmanned airship above a loading and unloading area. The study concerns a quad-rotor flying wing airship. This airship is devoted to freight transport. However, during the loading and unloading phases, the airship is very sensitive to squalls. In this context, we present in this paper the dynamic model of the airship, and we propose a strategy for controlling it under the effects of a gust of wind. A feedforward/feedback control law is proposed to stabilize the airship when hovering. As part of the control allocation, the non-linear equations between the control vectors and the response of the airship actuators are highlighted and solved analytically through energy optimization constraints. A comparison with classical numerical algorithms was performed and demonstrated the power and interest of our analytic algorithm.
Highlights
Interest in airships has boomed in this century after a long hibernation due to various factors
The authors have shown that the coupling problem is solved if the relative degree of the perturbation is greater than or equal to that of the output. We applied this last methodology to our airship and we demonstrated the power of this technique and its interest in the control and stabilization of these large flying machines
The analytical control allocation algorithm developed contributed to the improvement of the stabilization of the machine compared to purely numerical algorithms of reference
Summary
Interest in airships has boomed in this century after a long hibernation due to various factors. This interest has focused on missions that differ from those entrusted to airships in the first half of the 20th century. They relate, in particular, to the use of stratospheric airships [1,2] as surveillance or communication satellites or even the use of large airships for freight transport. Let us quote, for example, the AIRLANDER manufactured by the company Hybrid Air Vehicles, the most successful of these large airships, which made more or less conclusive demonstration flights. Other examples of airships from the turn of the century can be seen in [3,4]
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