An unmanned planar blimp on visual feedback control: experimental results

In this paper, an unmanned planar blimp system using a visual feedback control is proposed. First we derive a dynamical model of a blimp, which is described as nonlinear dynamical equations, in the proposed unmanned planar blimp system. By applying feedback linearization techniques to the derived nonlinear dynamical model of the blimp, we design a linearizing feedback PD controller whose control objective is to track desired trajectories. Second we consider asymptotic stability of the closed loop system which consists of the nonlinear dynamical model and the designed linearizing feedback PD controller. Finally we construct the proposed unmanned planar blimp system with a visual feedback control mechanism and the experimental results are shown to demonstrate the efficacy of the designed linearizing feedback PD controller.