Lateral/directional control for an autonomous, unmanned airship

Abstract

Project AURORA aims at the development of an unmanned airship capable of autonomous flight over user‐defined locations for aerial inspection and imagery acquisition. Presents a guidance control strategy for the trajectory path following of the AURORA airship, where the objective is to make the vehicle follow a set of pre‐defined points. The guidance strategy is based on a path tracking error generation methodology that takes into account both the distance and the angular errors of the airship with respect to the desired trajectory. The guidance system is composed of a path tracking guidance controller (as outer loop) and a heading controller (as inner loop), using the rudder deflection. Also proposes an additional roll controller, using the aileron input, in order to reduce rolling oscillations during yaw maneuvering and due to atmospheric turbulence.