RGBlimp: Robotic Gliding Blimp - Design, Modeling, Development, and Aerodynamics Analysis

A miniature robotic blimp, as one type of lighter-than-air aerial vehicle, has attracted increasing attention in the science and engineering field for its long flight duration and safe aerial locomotion. While a variety of miniature robotic blimps have been developed over the past decade, most of them utilize the buoyant lift and neglect the aerodynamic lift in their design, thus leading to a mediocre aerodynamic performance, particularly in terms of aerodynamic efficiency and aerodynamic stability. This letter proposes a new design of miniature robotic blimp that combines desirable features of both a robotic blimp and a fixed-wing glider, named the Robotic Gliding Blimp, or RGBlimp. This robot, equipped with an envelope filled with helium and a pair of wings, uses an internal moving mass and a pair of propellers for its locomotion control. This letter presents the design, dynamic modeling, prototyping, and system identification of the RGBlimp. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first effort to systematically design and develop such a miniature robotic blimp with moving mass control and hybrid lifts. Experimental results are presented to validate the design and the dynamic model of the RGBlimp. Analysis of the RGBlimp aerodynamics is conducted which confirms the performance improvement of the proposed RGBlimp in aerodynamic efficiency and flight stability.

I. Introduction

Miniature robotic blimps have attracted a rapidly growing interest in the science and engineering communities with their technological advances in actuation, sensing, and control [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. The miniature robotic blimp, as one kind of lighter-than-air (LTA) aerial vehicle, has unique advantages such as long endurance in the air, enhanced safety in human-robot interaction, and low acoustic noise level in locomotive operation with great potential in applications including search and rescue [6], environmental monitoring [7], and interactive entertainment [8].