The PhD defense of Yue Wang, of the thesis « Development of a blimp robot for indoor operation » will take place at Inria Lille, 15/03/2019.
Abstract: Recently, the blimp robot has attracted more and more attentions of the researchers for its advantages compared to other aircrafts, such as ability for, stationary and low speed flight, long endurance in air and safe Human-Robot interaction, etc. Therefore it is an ideal platform for various indoor applications. In this thesis, we study the modeling and motion control of an indoor blimp robot, and develop a real robot for indoor operations such as the long-term surveillance. The work is composed of both theoretical and practical parts. For the theoretical part, first, under reasonable assumptions, the dynamic model is simplified and divided into two independent parts: the altitude motion and the horizontal plane movement. Then, to ensure the accuracy of modeling and control, the nominal model is complemented with disturbance terms which are estimated in real-time and compensated in the designed controllers. Simulations are carried out to verify the performance and robustness of the controllers. For the practical part of the work, based on the functionality analysis of the robot to achieve desired indoor applications, the hardware of the blimp robot is conceived and created. Finally, real tests are made on the blimp robot platform for the validation of the designed motion control laws, and satisfying results are obtained.
Keywords: blimp robot, navigation, estimation, uncertainty compensation, robust control
