This paper presents a solution to the motion planning problem for an autonomous airship under super-rotation winds of the Venusian atmosphere. The airship uses both buoyancy and aerodynamic lift to control its altitude. In addition, solar panels distributed over the aircraft provide energy to the propellers and allow for battery recharging. Our approach uses a sampling-based planner that relies on Dubins’ Airplane paths deformed under the influence of the winds to create a tree of kinematically feasible trajectories. We use the battery state to prune energetically unfeasible trajectories and we propose a cost function that accounts for the energy expenditure of the propulsive system and that considers battery charging by using the Economics notion of opportunity cost. The method is illustrated through a series of simulations that show how the vehicle takes longer and high-altitude paths to minimize the use of energy and favor battery recharge. Our results also show that naive trajectories are not feasible in terms of energy, justifying the need for more efficient solutions.


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    Title :

    Towards Finding Energy Efficient Paths for Hybrid Airships in the Atmosphere of Venus




    Publication date :

    2022-06-21


    Size :

    3643463 byte





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Towards Finding Energy Efficient Paths for Hybrid Airships in the Atmosphere of Venus

    Bernardo Martinez R. Jr / Anna Puigvert I Juan / Guilherme A. S. Pereira | NTRS | 2022


    Towards Finding Energy Efficient Paths for Hybrid Airships in the Atmosphere of Venus

    B. M. R. Jr / A. P. I. Juan / G. A. S. Pereira | NTIS | 2022


    Quasi-hybrid airships

    LAYTON, D. | AIAA | 1981


    Airships

    Ventry | Engineering Index Backfile | 1945


    Airships

    Cvae, T.R.Cave-Browne | Engineering Index Backfile | 1919