Hitomu Saiki

Hovering control of outdoor blimp robots based on path following

A surveillance system is required to gather information about the stricken area safely and quickly after large-scale disasters. An autonomous blimp is the best option for this purpose. This paper proposes a control design method for automatic hovering of outdoor blimp robots under strong wind by using path following approach. The method consists of inverse optimal path following control in horizontal plane and PID control for altitude and pitching motion of the blimp in longitudinal plane. Some simulations and experiments for an outdoor blimp whose length is 12m are performed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method.

A path following control method under wind disturbances for outdoor blimp robots

In recent years, a surveillance system has been required to gather information after large-scale disasters on stricken areas safely and quickly. For this purpose, we have proposed an autonomous blimp system with a rotational stereo camera and laser range-finder to capture three-dimensional images. This paper proposes a new path following control method for outdoor blimp robots under windy conditions to collect information. The method consists of path following control in the wind coordinate on the horizontal plane and altitude control on the longitudinal plane. And this method minimizes the lateral errors arising from the wind disturbances considering path regeneration. Some simulations and experiments for a 12m class blimp are performed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method.

Automatic landing control of outdoor blimp robots

Abstract A surveillance system is required to gather the suffering information in the stricken area safely after large-scale disasters. An autonomous blimp is the best option for this purpose. This paper proposes a control design method for automatic landing of outdoor blimp robots. The landing method consists of stabilizing control in horizontal plane and longitudinal control for letdown-velocity and pitching motion of the blimp. The states of the kinematic model are transformed to design a time-varying stabilizing controller in horizontal plane to constrain the blimp motion. Some simulations and experiments are performed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method by using an outdoor blimp whose length is 12m.

Control for Suppressing Roll Motion of Outdoor Blimp Robots for Disaster Surveillance

This paper describes a control method for suppressing roll motion of outdoor blimp robots for disaster surveillance. In order to collect the information at the disaster site, it is useful to use a blimp, because of its low-sky availability, safety and long flight. The purpose of this study is to suppress the pendular motion around the x-axis of the blimp that is caused by the yaw motion at the moment of taking the rudder control. We provide a new control input of X-wing fin to generate roll moment such as general airplane ’s aileron control. It is a simple idea that the required roll moment is generated at the moment of yawing of the blimp. Some simulations and experiments for a 12m class outdoor blimp are performed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed methods.