Aerial Robotic Blimp
Jason Iapicco , Dan Chalk , Geoffrey Myers
Maze layout that the blimp will
need to navigate
Each of the red circles
represents the location of a
Fiducial. The blimp uses
these to decide which
direction to go.
1 1 1
Nick Folwer , Sukhbir Singh , Ali Daneshmand
1 1 1
Peter Renner , Will Weisnet
2 2
1
Department of Computer Science
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Email: [chalkd95, fowler28,myersg71, iapicc79, singhs58,
renner54, weisne46]@students.rown.edu , ali.daneshmand@gmail.com
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Adrian Rusu , Dr. Hong Zhang
1 2
Manual Control Window
Won a 2 Place Award at IARC 2006
nd
Abstract:
The main emphasis of this project is to create an
autonomously controlled Blimp to compete in the 2006
Indoor Aerial Robot Competition (IARC) at Drexel.
The Blimp needs to be able to find its way through a
maze and stay as long as it can in a circle with cross
wind from a fan. This Blimp includes three main
capabilities which when used together allows the Blimp
to move autonomously. First, computer vision (video
recognition) determines which way the Blimp needs to
turn as well as keeping a running log of the turns.
Second, a Wireless Modem connection that allows the Maze Layout
computer vision to communicate with the directional
control on the Blimp. Last is the directional control
onboard the Blimp. It takes the data given to it from
computer vision and then determines which servo to
send a pulse width to for any directional changes or
vertical changes.