Development of an Autonomous Blimp (Airship) for Indoor Navigation 2024-26-0436

Uncrewed Aerial vehicles are useful for a multitude of applications in today’s age, covering a wide variety of fields such as defense, environmental science, meteorology, emergency responders, search and rescue operations, entertainment robotics, etc. Different types of aircrafts such as fixed wing UAVs, rotor wing UAVs are used for the mentioned applications depending upon the application requirements. One such category of UAVs is the lighter-than-air aircrafts, that provide their own set of advantages over the other types of UAVs. Blimps are among the participants of the lighter-than-air category that are expected to offer advantages such as higher endurance and range, and safer and more comfortable Human-machine-Interaction, etc. as compared to fixed wing and rotor wing UAVs due to their design. A ROS (Robot Operating System) based control system was developed for controlling the blimp. Two navigation techniques were developed and implemented, tested, and compared with existing methods – the first technique discusses implementation of ultrasonic sensors and IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) for collision avoidance while flying; the second technique discusses the implementation of ORBSLAM3 using Intel RealSense D435i for autonomous navigation in indoor environment. Performance parameters like endurance and range were compared to that of conventional UAVs like quadrotors and the blimp was found to be better for both the parameters in comparison to quadrotors. The blimp was enabled with autonomous waypoint navigation using ORBSLAM3 for SLAM and the performance of the developed ROS controller was compared to the intended waypoints. The controller’s performance was found to be reliable with a very low cross-track error in x, y directions and altitude.