Steven L. Waslander spent one year from June 2003-June 2004 under the guidance of Jonathan How at MIT, where his year was consumed working on building a heterogeneous testbed of rovers and blimps in order to try out Mixed Integer Linear Programming based coordination algorithms for multi-vehicle task assignment. His specific tasks were to build a fleet of blimps that could autonomously maneuver indoors in a gymnasium, and to implement algorithms for collision avoidance between vehicles (rovers or blimps) that found fair solutions in a decentralized manner.
Howard Gordan's project to add sensors and onboard computation to a small indoor helium blimp which will likely be interesting for educators and researchers. "My main objective in this project is to work on core computer vision algorithms which enable the blimp to navigate through it's environment autonomously.
Rensselaer students began work on the Intelligent Blimp Project during the summer and fall of 2003 as their senior design project. BAE SYSTEMS of Nashua, NH provided corporate sponsorship for the purchase of an 11 1/2 ft blimp from Mobile Airships. The blimp is outfitted with a next-generation embedded control system.
Chris Shucksmith, a 4th year Project Student in Engineering Science at Oxford University has designed a pan-tilt camera unit using one of our blimps.
"I have designed custom aluminum chassis, electronics PCB, pan-tilt camera unit and Bluetooth based comms for control and data logging. The airship has been great fun to work on!"
Inna Sharf, Associate Professor Mech. Eng., McGill University is heading a Student Research Project to demonstrate computer control and basic navigation for indoor surveillance and monitoring applications with A 7 ft indoor blimp. The R/C interface was replaced with a specially desiged Labview interface to enable a pilot to fly the blimp from a computer. The balloon was equipped with sonar rangers and wireless transmission to allow basic navigation down the hallways.
They also have another research project using one of our 5.5 ft spheres for Robotic grasping of objects in space.
Two 14 ft x 8 ft inflatable balloons were used by PHD students at Stanford University (now at MIT) to demonstrate that GPS can be used to accurately sense and control a cluster of spacecraft in orbit. Lighter-than-air vehicles were used to more accurately reflect the dynamics in space. More info and pictures can be found on their website.
Students at the University of Pennsylvania undertake an extraordinary engineering and research initiative with their STWing Blimp project. This is the largest undergraduate research project at their school in almost two decades. They have taken a 30 foot airship and applied semi autonomous computer control. The project draws on the technical expertise of computer science, electrical, and mechanical engineers as well as the knowledge of the Wharton business student and the creative talents of undergraduates in the college of art and science. These students have a very comprehensive website.
This is the project for the ultimate couch potato. These students at University of Alberta modified their infrared TV/VCR remote so it would control the Toy Blimp's movement.
To the left is 10 ft (3m) diameter Tethered Ball that was used in the International Aerial Robotics Competition. The airship was designed by a team of students from Simon Fraser University including Pavel Haintz (in the green T-shirt) to fly objects totally under computer control.
