FORAY: the Autonomous Agile Airship Armada

Our plan is to design a fleet of blimps that can compete in an aerial soccer game. In addition, several research problems exist to be explored while we are building the fleet. Here we propose a design pipeline for parameterized blimp. In the example of an aerial soccer competition, a team of blimps could have different roles, e.g., defender, attacker and seeker. Different roles may emphasize a different aspect of performance. For example, a defender whose task is to block the opponents’ attacker might have a larger volume, which, as a trade-off, may result in the lack of speed and agility. On the contrary, an attacker is expected to be small so that it can be fast and agile enough. However, due to the small volume, the available buoyancy is limited therefore it cannot carry too many electric components and limited endurance. By providing such design pipeline, we can parameterize the design of a blimp, and therefore enable blimp designers to quickly modify their design to balance speed, agility, volume, and other metrics.

To view our progress thus far, please click this link: Blog Posts