A path following control method under wind disturbances for outdoor blimp robots

In recent years, a surveillance system has been required to gather information after large-scale disasters on stricken areas safely and quickly. For this purpose, we have proposed an autonomous blimp system with a rotational stereo camera and laser range-finder to capture three-dimensional images. This paper proposes a new path following control method for outdoor blimp robots under windy conditions to collect information. The method consists of path following control in the wind coordinate on the horizontal plane and altitude control on the longitudinal plane. And this method minimizes the lateral errors arising from the wind disturbances considering path regeneration. Some simulations and experiments for a 12m class blimp are performed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method.