Identification of Blimp Dynamics via Flight Tests

Abstract

A blimp is introduced as a stable platform for remote-sensing instruments required for unmanned aerial observation and surveillance. In order to develop flight control systems for a blimp, two series of experiments were conducted to identify flight dynamics: constrained flight tests, and indoor free-flight tests. This paper addresses the blimp configuration, experimental set-up, method for identifying dynamics, and the results of identification in comparison with the analytical estimation for each experimental method. Both tests employed a full-scale blimp. The identification method for the constrained flight tests used the extended least-squares method involving the gradient algorithm, and the indoor freeflight tests, the eigen-system realization algorithm involving the autoregressive model fitting algorithm. The results suggest that analytical formulas for estimating the parameters, including added mass effects and stability derivatives, may yield values consistent with experimentally identified ones.

Non-adaptive velocity tracking controller for a class of vehicles

“…As it was mentioned in [31] there are various possible decomposition methods. However, in this work the Loduha-Ravani method which is related to the generalized velocity components (GVC) [36] is used (the obtained matrix ϒ is only an upper triangular matrix containing ones on the diagonal).…”

“…One may refer to the following works concerning underwater vehicles [1,3,[25][26][27][28][29], surface vehicles [10,30,31,15], hovercrafts [32,33], and airships [34][35][36].…”

Dynamics Modeling and Simulation of Flexible Airships

“…Thomasson [18], Azinheira et al [19] and Yamasaki and Goto [20] discussed the incorporation of the wind effects (wind speed, acceleration and spatial gradients) into the nonlinear equations of motion of airships, with a special focus on formulating the coupling between the wind effects and the added-mass aerodynamic terms.…”

Velocity Controller for a Class of Vehicles

“…Fully actuated vehicles are often considered in the literature, e.g. in for underwater vehicle [9,12], surface vehicles [26,28], hovercrafts [13,25] or airships [20,29]. The main difference between our velocity tracking controller and the aforementioned approaches relies on that we include the vehicle dynamics directly into the velocity control gain matrix.…”