Towards a Substantially Autonomous Aerobot for Titan Exploration

Elfes, Alberto; Hall, Jeffery L.; Montgomery, Jacqueline; Bergh, Charles F.; Dudik, Brenda

doi:10.2514/6.2003-6714

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Motorized blimps themselves have a century-old history on Earth. Autonomous blimps have recently seen significant technology development, 11,19,20,21,22 but much work remains to be done to achieve the overall vehicle performance required for a mission like Option 5. Two additional risk areas are associated with motorized blimps: first, the aerial deployment and inflation of an elongated blimp-like shape; second, gas leakage out of the blimp envelope.…”

Section: Optionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey of Titan Balloon Concepts and Technology Status

Hall

2011

11th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference

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This paper surveys the options for, and technology status of, balloon vehicles to explore Saturn's moon Titan. A significant amount of Titan balloon concept thinking and technology development has been performed in recent years, particularly following the spectacular results from the descent and landing of the Huygens probe and remote sensing observations by the Cassini spacecraft. There is widespread recognition that a balloon vehicle on the next Titan mission could provide an outstanding and unmatched capability for in situ exploration on a global scale. The rich variety of revealed science targets has combined with a highly favorable Titan flight environment to yield a wide diversity of proposed balloon concepts. The paper presents a conceptual framework for thinking about balloon vehicle design choices and uses it to analyze various Titan options. The result is a list of recommended Titan balloon vehicle concepts that could perform a variety of science missions, along with their projected performance metrics. Recent technology developments for these balloon concepts are discussed to provide context for an assessment of outstanding risk areas and technological maturity. The paper concludes with suggestions for technology investments needed to achieve flight readiness.

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Section: Optionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey of Titan Balloon Concepts and Technology Status

Hall

2011

11th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference

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“…q 1 (t), q 2 (t) and q 3 (t) are the positions of the Aerobot in the trajectory. ε is a small number.The other constraints are nonlinear constraints listed as (5) and (8).…”

Section: A Problem Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the main drawback of the current ground-based robotic planetary vehicles, such as Mars exploration rovers, is their limited range. [8] have been considered. Airplanes and helicopters require significant energy to just stay airborne, flight time of gliders depend mainly on wind, while balloons have limited navigation capabilities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy efficient trajectory generation for a state-space based JPL Aerobot

Zhang

Inanc

Elfes

2010

2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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The 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 project with man landing on the moon reminds the world again by what science and engineering can do if the man is determined to do. However, a huge step can only be achieved step by step which may be relatively small at the beginning. Robotic exploration can provide necessary information needed to do the further step safely, with less cost, more conveniently. Trajectory generation for a robotic vehicle is an essential part of the total mission planning. To save energy by exploiting possible resources such as wind will assist a robotic explorer extend its life span and perform tasks more reliably. In this paper, we propose to utilize Nonlinear Trajectory Generation (NTG) methodology to generate energy efficient trajectores for the JPL Aerobot by exploiting wind. The Aerobot model is decoupled into longitudinal and lateral dynamics with control inputs as elevator deflection δ e , thrust demand δ T , vectoring angle δ v for the longitudinal motion, aileron deflection δ a , rudder deflection δ r for the lateral motion. The outputs are the velocities and orientation of the Aerobot. The Aerobot state space model parameters are obtained from experimental identification on AURORA Airship since the actual JPL Aerobot is similar to the AURORA Airship. In this paper, the results show that with the state-space model, the proposed trajectory generation method can guide the Aerobot to take advantage of previously known wind profile to generate an energy-efficient trajectory.

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“…Besides wind profiling, surface and atmospheric observations, and atmospheric composition testing, the probe would also have the capability to collect samples from the surface without landing. 17 Because the Saturn system is far away from Earth, there is a significant light-time delay between the two planets of about 2.6 hours round-trip. 16 This means long communication latencies between the aerobot and Earth.…”

Section: Proposed Titan Missionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control Program Verification for a Sample Titan Aerobot Mission

Braman

Murray

2009

AIAA Infotech@Aerospace Conference

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Fault tolerance and safety verification of control systems are essential for the success of autonomous robotic systems. A control architecture called Mission Data System (MDS), developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, takes a goal-based control approach. A software algorithm for converting goal network control programs into linear hybrid systems exists and is a bisimulation; the resulting linear hybrid system can be verified for safety in the presence of failures using existing symbolic model checkers, and thus the original goal network is verified. A substantial example control program based on a proposed mission to Titan, a moon of Saturn, is converted using the procedures discussed.

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Towards a Substantially Autonomous Aerobot for Titan Exploration

Cited by 12 publications

References 3 publications

A Survey of Titan Balloon Concepts and Technology Status

A Survey of Titan Balloon Concepts and Technology Status

Energy efficient trajectory generation for a state-space based JPL Aerobot

Control Program Verification for a Sample Titan Aerobot Mission

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