Hovering control of outdoor blimp robots based on path following

A surveillance system is required to gather information about the stricken area safely and quickly after large-scale disasters. An autonomous blimp is the best option for this purpose. This paper proposes a control design method for automatic hovering of outdoor blimp robots under strong wind by using path following approach. The method consists of inverse optimal path following control in horizontal plane and PID control for altitude and pitching motion of the blimp in longitudinal plane. Some simulations and experiments for an outdoor blimp whose length is 12m are performed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method.