Indoor Blimp Control

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to model and develop a control law that lets an unmanned aerial vehicle of blimp type fly autonomously in three-dimensional space. There are several uses of the blimp type UAV including, but not limited to, cargo transportation and surveillance. The work done throughout the thesis includes optimization of actuator placements, modelling the blimp and simulating the process, developing a PID controller for positioning and orientation, trajectory generation, actuator effort optimization, prototype construction and real-time experiments. The results of the thesis show that with a simulation model the control sequence implementation is facilitated, but not necessarily directly convertible to the real-time prototype. They also show that faulty signal processing can lead to disturbances which propagate throughout the process. Finally, it can be stated that the system was stable enough to remain close to a point in space, however, it was not fast and stable enough to follow a trajectory and thus the goals of the thesis were not fully met.