Blimp aerial robot
Research have been conducted using a blimp aerial robot as platform. This blimp is 4m long with full indoors operation autonomy (from a technological standpoint), by endowing it with onboard computational power (based on a DSP), a video-camera, a video transmitter, NiCad batteries and a GPS device. All these but the GPS installation have been successfully accomplished so far. The DSP includes a video acquisition board and supports image processing plus guidance and control code. Connection to a GPS device is also possible, but not yet implemented. The onboard video transmitter is used to provide real-time image processing feedback (e.g., useful for debugging purposes) to the ground operator, who can also gain remote manual control of the robot whenever found appropriate.
The following video demonstrates the blimp tracking the ground ATRV-Jr robot following a figure-8 path (at the end of the video there is a segment with the video sent by the blimp while processing the image)
In the next video, with titles and several different situations of the blimp tracking the ATRV-Jr (but in a preliminary phase of the guidance controller parameters, not so well tuned as in videos 1 and 4 in this list)
This video shows hardware-in-the-loop simulating ground lines following by the blimp
The next video shows the blimp tracking the ground ATRV-Jr robot following a U-shaped path
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