Guidance, Navigation, and Control for Docking of Two Cubic Blimps

This paper focuses on the development of guidance, navigation and control for the docking of two cubic blimps, named Tryphons. The chaser and target Tryphons are assumed to be brought sufficiently close together through a rendezvous stage, where the docking stage then begins and the target is kept stationary. An ARtag fiducial marker system is used for position based visual servoing control with a glideslope guidance algorithm for soft docking. The physical docking of the Tryphons is achieved through contact of the protruder and receiver ends of the two electromagnetic docking mechanisms. Simulations of the docking process are carried out in the open source simulation software Gazebo, using Robot Operating System (ROS) and virtual sensors.