Design and Flight Testing of an Autonomous Airship

Santos, Jonatas S.; García, Daniel; Cunha, Marlos L.; Góes, Luiz Carlos Sandoval; Pant, Rajkumar S.

doi:10.2514/6.2015-3352

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…A lot of work has already been done in various projects related to unmanned airships, such as AURORA in Brazil in late 90s, 1-4 Autonomous Airship of LAAS/CNRS, 5-7 LOTTE airship in Germany, 8 KARI in Korea, 9, 10 DIVA in Portugal 11 and Autonomous Outdoor Airship Project in IIT Bombay. 12 The common drawback is that all these airships were sensitive to the atmosphere conditions, especially to the wind gusts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability Augmentation System for a Tethered Airship

Santos

Stevanović

Kondak

et al. 2016

16th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference

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This paper presents the dynamic analysis of an unmanned tethered airship in hovering flight using a stability augmentation system. A comparison between tethered aerostats and airships is made, and the benefits and issues related to a tethered airship are highlighted. Since airships are not designed to be stable as tethered aerostats, a stability augmentation system is implemented in the flight control system. The dynamic equations of motion and the controller for the tethered airship are described. A linearized model is obtained by finite difference approach and the gains are obtained using LQR technique. The details of the flight control system and experimental set up are provided. Outdoor flight testing of the tethered airship was conducted and the stability of natural dynamics and active control response was analyzed in the time domain using flight test data. The results obtained validated the closed-loop system for the range of wind condition tested once the stability augmentation is achieved.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability Augmentation System for a Tethered Airship

Santos

Stevanović

Kondak

et al. 2016

16th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Maintaining stability and operating autonomously are the main challenges related to the prolonged deployment of airships, and in-depth studies of flight operations are an important step toward deploying stratospheric hybrid airships [1]. A lot has been done to enhance the design and development of airships including several research projects and some stratospheric airship technology demonstrations such as HiSentinel by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Aerostar International Inc [2], Sceye Stratospheric Airship by Sceye Inc [3], Integrated Sensor is Structure (ISIS) by DARPA [4], High-Altitude Long-Endurance Demonstrator (HALE-D) by Lockheed Martin [5] and Thales Alenia Space Airship by Thales group [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual-Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships

Rostami¹,

Kamoonpuri²,

Pradhan³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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A real-time flight simulation tool is proposed using a Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Display (VR-HMD) for airships operating in beyond the line-of-sight (BLOS) conditions. Particularly, the VR-HMD is developed for stratospheric airships flying at low/high altitudes. The proposed flight simulation tool uses the corresponding aerodynamics characteristics of the airship, the buoyancy effect, mass balance, added mass, propulsion contributions and ground reactions in the FlightGear Fight Simulator (FGFS). The VR headset has been connected to the FGFS along with the radio controller containing the real-time orientation/state of each button that is also simulated to provide better situational awareness and a Head-Up Display (HUD) that has been developed to provide the required flight data. In this work, a system was developed to connect the FGFS and the VR-capable graphics engine, Unity, to a PC and a wireless VR-HMD in real-time with minimal lag between data transmission. A balance was found for FGFS to write to a CSV file at a period of 0.01s. For Unity, the file was read every frame which translates to around 0.0167s (60 Hz). A test procedure was also conducted with a similar rating technique based on the NASA TLX questionnaire that identifies the pilot’s spare mental capacity when completing an assigned task to assure the comfortability of the proposed VR-HMD. Accordingly, a comparison has been made for the aircraft control using the desktop simulator and the VR-HMD tool. Results, showed that the current iteration of the system is ideal to train pilots on using similar systems in a safe and immersive environment. Furthermore, such an advanced portable system may even increase the situational awareness of pilots and allow them to complete a sizeable portion of actual flight tests with the same data transmission procedures in simulation. The resulting VR-HMD flight simulator is also conceived to express the ground control station (GCS) concept and transmit flight information as well as the point of view (POV) visuals in real-time using the real environment broadcasted using an onboard camera.

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“…Maintaining stability and operating autonomously are the main challenges related to the prolonged deployment of airships, and in-depth studies of flight operations are an important step toward deploying stratospheric hybrid airships [1]. A substantial amount of work has been carried out to enhance the design and development of airships, including several research projects and some stratospheric airship technology demonstrations such as HiSentinel by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Aerostar International Inc. (Sioux Falls, SD, USA) [2], the Sceye Stratospheric Airship by Sceye Inc. (Moriarty, NM, USA) [3], the Integrated Sensor is Structure (ISIS) by DARPA [4], the High-Altitude Long-Endurance Demonstrator (HALE-D) by Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, MD, USA) [5] and Thales Alenia Space Airship by the Thales group (New Castle, DE, USA) [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A real-time flight simulation tool is proposed using a virtual reality head-mounted display (VR-HMD) for remotely piloted airships operating in beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) conditions. In particular, the VR-HMD was developed for stratospheric airships flying at low/high altitudes. The proposed flight simulation tool uses the corresponding aerodynamics characteristics of the airship, the buoyancy effect, mass balance, added mass, propulsion contributions and ground reactions in the FlightGear Flight Simulator (FGFS). The VR headset was connected to the FGFS along with the radio controller containing the real-time orientation/state of each button, which is also simulated to provide better situational awareness, and a head-up display (HUD) that was developed to provide the required flight data. In this work, a system was developed to connect the FGFS and the VR-capable graphics engine Unity to a PC and a wireless VR-HMD in real time with minimal lag between data transmission. A balance was found for FGFS to write to a CSV file at a period of 0.01 s. For Unity, the file was read every frame, which translates to around 0.0167 s (60 Hz). A test procedure was also conducted with a similar rating technique based on the NASA TLX questionnaire, which identifies the pilot’s available mental capacity when completing an assigned task to assure the comfortability of the proposed VR-HMD. Accordingly, a comparison was made for the aircraft control using the desktop simulator and the VR-HMD tool. The results showed that the current iteration of the system is ideal to train pilots on using similar systems in a safe and immersive environment. Furthermore, such an advanced portable system may even increase the situational awareness of pilots and allow them to complete a sizeable portion of actual flight tests with the same data transmission procedures in simulation. The VR-HMD flight simulator was also conceived to express the ground control station (GCS) concept and transmit flight information as well as the point of view (POV) visuals in real-time using the real environment broadcast using an onboard camera.

show abstract

Design and Flight Testing of an Autonomous Airship

Cited by 9 publications

References 9 publications

Stability Augmentation System for a Tethered Airship

Stability Augmentation System for a Tethered Airship

Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual-Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships

Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships

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