Modeling and control of unmanned finless airship with robotic arms

This paper presents the mathematical modeling and control of a finless airship that can fly at low altitudes in low wind conditions. Slow speed symmetrical airships can move freely in 3-dimensional air space with a vector propulsion system. The forces/moments of robotic arm are derived at center of gravity (CG) of the airship, and controllers are designed using classical control theory. An inner-outer loop strategy is proposed here in this paper; LQR based longitudinal and lateral controllers are designed for inner control loops while PI-based controllers are proposed for the height and velocity in outer guidance loop. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated through 6-degree of freedom nonlinear simulation having actuator dynamics and sensor models including measurement noises. Different scenarios are generated in nonlinear simulation to check the performance and robustness of the proposed scheme; simulation results validated the effectiveness of proposed scheme.