Development of an indoor blimp robot with internet-based teleoperation capability

Abstract

We are developing an indoor blimp-type robot to be used at sports and other events. The user gets access to the robot via a mobile phone or a desktop PC (the client), using Inter-net connectivity. The user then steers the robot to a desired location and takes pictures with the on-board camera. This paper describes the system architecture, with hardware and software components. The so-called Predic-tive Motion Display (PMD) technique [1] is used to sup-port the user during teleoperation. The operation mode is a shared control one: the user has full control only within a prespecified area. In this way, undesirable collisions of the blimp can be avoided. Partial autonomous feedback control is envisioned to stabilize yaw and altitude. The paper intro-duces also a dynamical simulator, which we found helpful in testing the PMD.