An aerial robot is a system capable of sustained flight with no direct human control and able to perform a specific task. A lighter than air robot is an aerial robot that relies on the static lift to balance its own weight. It can also be defined as a lighter than air unmanned aerial vehicle or an unmanned airship with sufficient autonomy. Lighter than air systems are particularly appealing since the energy to keep them airborne is small. They are increasingly considered for various tasks such as monitoring, surveillance, advertising, freight carrier, transportation. This book familiarizes readers with a hierarchical decoupled planning and control strategy that has been proven efficient through research. It is made up of a hierarchy of modules with well defined functions operating at a variety of rates, linked together from top to bottom. The outer loop, closed periodically, consists of a discrete search that produces a set of waypoints leading to the goal while avoiding obstacles and weighed regions. The second level smoothes this set so that the generated paths are feasible given the vehicle's velocity and accelerations limits. The third level generates flyable, timed trajectories and the last one is the tracking controller that attempts to minimize the error between the robot measured trajectory and the reference trajectory. This hierarchy is reflected in the structure and content of the book. Topics treated are: Modelling, Flight Planning, Trajectory Design and Control. Finally, some actual projects are described in the appendix. This volume will prove useful for researchers and practitioners working in Robotics and Automation, Aerospace Technology, Control and Artificial Intelligence.

A unique and indispensable guide to modern airship design and operation, for researchers and professionals working in mechanical and aerospace engineering.

This book presents select peer reviewed proceedings of the International Conference on Design and Engineering of Lighter-Than-Air Systems (DELTAs 2022) which was held at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. It highlights current research trends and advancements in the field of lighter-than-air (LTA) systems. The topics covered include design (conventional and unconventional), aerodynamics (CFD), structures, loads and materials, stability and control, operations and ground handling, multidisciplinary design optimization, and novel applications of LTA systems. The book will be a valuable reference for researchers and professionals interested in lighter-than-air systems and allied fields.

This book comprises the proceedings of the 12th National Technical Symposium on Unmanned System Technology 2020 (NUSYS’20) held on October 27–28, 2020. It covers a number of topics, including intelligent robotics, novel sensor technology, control algorithms, acoustics signal processing, imaging techniques, biomimetic robots, green energy sources, and underwater communication backbones and protocols, and it appeals to researchers developing marine technology solutions and policy-makers interested in technologies to facilitate the exploration of coastal and oceanic regions.

"This book explores some of the most recent developments in robotic motion, artificial intelligence, and human-machine interaction, providing insight into a wide variety of applications and functional areas"--Provided by publisher.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Systems Simulation, Asia Simulation 2014, held in Kitakyushu, Japan, in October 2014. The 32 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on modeling and simulation technology; network simulation; high performance computing and cloud simulation; numerical simulation and visualization; simulation of instrumentation and control application; simulation technology in diversified higher education; general purpose simulation.

Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines is an exposition of models developed to assist in the motion control of various types of mini-aircraft: • Planar Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft; • helicopters; • quadrotor mini-rotorcraft; • other fixed-wing aircraft; • blimps. For each of these it propounds: • detailed models derived from Euler-Lagrange methods; • appropriate nonlinear control strategies and convergence properties; • real-time experimental comparisons of the performance of control algorithms; • review of the principal sensors, on-board electronics, real-time architecture and communications systems for mini-flying machine control, including discussion of their performance; • detailed explanation of the use of the Kalman filter to flying machine localization. To researchers and students in nonlinear control and its applications Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines provides valuable insights to the application of real-time nonlinear techniques in an always challenging area.

Robotic systems consist of object or scene recognition, vision-based motion control, vision-based mapping, and dense range sensing, and are used for identification and navigation. As these computer vision and robotic connections continue to develop, the benefits of vision technology including savings, improved quality, reliability, safety, and productivity are revealed. Robotic Vision: Technologies for Machine Learning and Vision Applications is a comprehensive collection which highlights a solid framework for understanding existing work and planning future research. This book includes current research on the fields of robotics, machine vision, image processing and pattern recognition that is important to applying machine vision methods in the real world.