Bioinspired Intermittent Control of a Miniature Autonomous Blimp for Tracking a Moving Target

Intermittent actuation for autonomous systems inspired by biological locomotion can be leveraged for swarming platforms tasked with underwater localization and tracking. This paper presents the design of a control strategy for a neutrally buoyant vehicle tracking a moving target using intermittent actuation. Tracking a time-varying reference with intermittent actuation is presented using state-feedback control for the decoupled 1-DOF cases of vertical motion and rotational motion about the vertical axis. Experimental results from tests on the miniature autonomous blimp platform demonstrate the control strategy on a neutrally buoyant vehicle.