The Stabilization of Position and Attitude for a Blimp by a Switching Controller

Abstract

In recent years, the development of unmanned air vehicles aiming at vegetation observation, information gathering of a disaster site, etc. is increasing. Among them, airships are attractive because of good energy efficiency and it is possible to be employed for a long time cruise. Especially, small airships called “blimp” have been developing to make the management easy. Although most of existing airships employ control methods by combining propellers and rudders, such a control approach has the problem that the maneuverability is deteriorated if their traveling speed is slow because the airflow received by rudders is weakened. In this research, “X4-Blimp” is proposed as a blimp controlled by only four propellers without any rudders, and it is controlled by a switching controller.