Simulation and Control of Deformable Autonomous Airships in Turbulent Wind

Abstract. Fixed wing and multirotor UAVs are common in the field of robotics. Solutions for simulation control these vehicles ubiquitous. This is not case airships, a which needs to address unique properties, i) dynamic deformation response aerodynamic forces, ii) high susceptibility wind turbulence at low airspeed, iii) variability airship designs regarding placement, direction vectoring thrusters surfaces. We present flexible framework modeling, based on Robot operating system (ROS), environment (Gazebo) commercial off shelf (COTS) electronics, both open source. Based simulated deformation, we predict substantial effects controllability, verified real world flight experiments. All our code shared as source, benefit community facilitate lighter-than-air vehicle (LTAV) research. https://github.com/robot-perception-group/airship_simulation