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Global reachability and path planning for planetary exploration with montgolfiere balloons | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

Global reachability and path planning for planetary exploration with montgolfiere balloons


Abstract:

Aerial vehicles are appealing systems for possible future exploration of planets and moons such as Venus and Titan, because they combine extensive coverage with high-reso...Show More

Abstract:

Aerial vehicles are appealing systems for possible future exploration of planets and moons such as Venus and Titan, because they combine extensive coverage with high-resolution data collection and in-situ science capabilities. Recent studies have proposed the use of a montgolfiere balloon, which controls its altitude by changing the heating rate or venting gas from the balloon, but has no actuation capability in the horizontal plane. A montgolfiere can use the variation in wind with altitude to guide itself to a desired location. This paper considers the problems of determining the altitude profile that the montgolfiere should follow in order to reach its target most quickly. We provide a new method that solves this path planning problem for all possible target locations, thereby providing a reachability analysis for the entire globe. The key idea is to perform a principled simplification and decoupling of the dynamics of the montgolfiere. We then discretize the search space, converting the planning problem into a graph search problem, and use Dijkstra's algorithm to calculate the minimum-time path from the start location to every possible location in the graph. We demonstrate the approach on a possible Titan mission scenario.
Date of Conference: 03-07 May 2010
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 15 July 2010
ISBN Information:
Print ISSN: 1050-4729
Conference Location: Anchorage, AK, USA

References

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