TRAJECTORY OPTIMIZATION OF A SMALL AIRSHIP IN A MOVING FLUID

Abstract

Airships offer a low-cost alternative to heavier-than-air vehicles for long endurance applications in surveillance and transport. Although manoeuvring an under-actuated vehicle in a real environment while taking into account the obstacles, the dynamical model, the wind, and the energy consumption has been studied extensively, planning complex manoeuvres in constrained environments remains an active research area. This paper examines the use of optimal control for the trajectory planning of a small airship. The dynamic model of the vehicle and the experimental characterization of the drag coefficient are presented first, followed by the description of the trajectory planning problem formulated as an optimal control problem. Two trajectories are then solved using a pseudo-spectral solver to demonstrate that an optimal control approach can be used to generate complex and realistic manoeuvres.