Robotic blimps, as lighter-than-air aerial systems, offer prolonged duration and enhanced safety in human-robot interactions due to their buoyant lift. However, robust flight against environmental airflow disturbances remains a significant challenge, limiting the broader application of these robots. Drawing inspiration from the flight mechanics of birds and their ability to perch against natural wind, this article introduces RGBlimp-Q, a robotic gliding blimp equipped with a bird-inspired continuum arm. This arm allows for flexible attitude adjustments through moving mass control to enhance disturbance resilience, while also enabling object capture by using claws to counteract environmental disturbances, similar to a bird. This article presents the design, modeling, and prototyping of RGBlimp-Q, thus extending the advantages of robotic blimps to more complex environments. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first interdisciplinary design integrating continuum mechanisms onto robotic blimps. Experimental results from both indoor and outdoor settings validate the improved flight robustness against environmental disturbances offered by this novel design.

翻译：作为轻于空气的飞行系统，机器人飞艇凭借其浮力升力，在人机交互中展现出持久续航和更高的安全性。然而，在环境气流扰动下实现鲁棒飞行仍是一个重大挑战，限制了此类机器人的广泛应用。受鸟类飞行机制及其在自然风中栖附能力的启发，本文提出RGBlimp-Q——一种配备鸟类仿生连续体臂的机器人滑翔飞艇。该臂通过可移动质量控制实现灵活的飞行姿态调整以增强抗扰动能力，同时可利用爪状结构捕获物体以抵消环境干扰，其机理类似于鸟类行为。本文阐述了RGBlimp-Q的设计、建模与原型实现，从而将机器人飞艇的优势拓展至更复杂的环境。据作者所知，这是首个将连续体机构集成到机器人飞艇上的跨学科设计。室内外实验结果表明，该创新设计有效提升了飞行系统在环境扰动下的鲁棒性。