A miniature robotic blimp, as one type of lighter-than-air aerial vehicle, has attracted increasing attention in the science and engineering field for its long flight duration and safe aerial locomotion. While a variety of miniature robotic blimps have been developed over the past decade, most of them utilize the buoyant lift and neglect the aerodynamic lift in their design, thus leading to a mediocre aerodynamic performance. This letter proposes a new design of miniature robotic blimp that combines desirable features of both a robotic blimp and a fixed-wing glider, named the Robotic Gliding Blimp, or RGBlimp. This robot, equipped with an envelope filled with helium and a pair of wings, uses an internal moving mass and a pair of propellers for its locomotion control. This letter presents the design, dynamic modeling, prototyping, and system identification of the RGBlimp. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first effort to systematically design and develop such a miniature robotic blimp with hybrid lifts and moving mass control. Experimental results are presented to validate the design and the dynamic model of the RGBlimp. Analysis of the RGBlimp aerodynamics is conducted which confirms the performance improvement of the proposed RGBlimp in aerodynamic efficiency and flight stability.

翻译：微型机器人飞艇作为一种轻于空气的飞行器，因其长续航时间和安全空中运动能力，在科学与工程领域日益受到关注。过去十年间，虽然已开发出多种微型机器人飞艇，但大多数设计仅利用浮力升力而忽略了气动升力，导致气动性能平庸。本文提出一种新型微型机器人飞艇设计，融合了机器人飞艇与固定翼滑翔机的理想特性，命名为机器人滑翔飞艇（RGBlimp）。该机器人配备充满氦气的囊体与一对机翼，并采用内部移动质量块和一对螺旋桨实现运动控制。本文阐述了RGBlimp的设计、动力学建模、样机制作与系统辨识。据作者所知，这是首次系统性地设计与开发此类具有混合升力与移动质量控制的微型机器人飞艇。本文通过实验验证了RGBlimp的设计与动力学模型，并对其气动特性进行了分析，证实所提RGBlimp在气动效率与飞行稳定性方面具有性能提升。