Abstract:
Our world is moving towards a robotic environment. There is great potential for indoor exploration using miniature robotic airships in human-robot interaction applications. Increased safety and superior flight time makes such platforms more attractive. This thesis focuses on the design, modeling, control, and evaluation of an indoor, Helium-based robotic airship. Various envelope materials have been tested to compare their Helium retention capabilities. The obtained envelope properties were used in the feasibility study, demonstrating that indoor airships are environmentally and financially viable. The airship rotor positions were designed in unconventional and asymmetric arrangement. A Raspberry Pi is the core of the electronics and control system and the OpenCV library allows the robotic airship to detect a set of ArUco marker positions and move towards them in a visual servoing manner. The total cost of the proposed indoor Airship is roughly around 150 USD and it can lift a payload of 160 g, including the balloon envelope and the control system.
