Testing aerial robots in tasks such as pickup-and-delivery and surveillance significantly benefits from high energy efficiency and scalability of the deployed robotic system. This paper presents MochiSwarm, an open-source testbed of light-weight robotic blimps, ready for multi-robot operation without external localization. We introduce the system design in hardware, software, and perception, which capitalizes on modularity, low cost, and light weight. The hardware allows for rapid modification, which enables the integration of additional sensors to enhance autonomy for different scenarios. The software framework supports different actuation models and communication between the base station and multiple blimps. The detachable perception module allows independent blimps to perform tasks that involve detection and autonomous actuation. We showcase a differential-drive module as an example, of which the autonomy is enabled by visual servoing using the perception module. A case study of pickup-and-delivery tasks with up to 12 blimps highlights the autonomy of the MochiSwarm without external infrastructures.

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.

Miniature robotic blimps, as one type of lighter-than-air aerial vehicles, have attracted increasing attention in the science and engineering community for their enhanced safety, extended endurance, and quieter operation compared to quadrotors. Accurately modeling the dynamics of these robotic blimps poses a significant challenge due to the complex aerodynamics stemming from their large lifting bodies. Traditional first-principle models have difficulty obtaining accurate aerodynamic parameters and often overlook high-order nonlinearities, thus coming to its limit in modeling the motion dynamics of miniature robotic blimps. To tackle this challenge, this letter proposes the Auto-tuning Blimp-oriented Neural Ordinary Differential Equation method (ABNODE), a data-driven approach that integrates first-principle and neural network modeling. Spiraling motion experiments of robotic blimps are conducted, comparing the ABNODE with first-principle and other data-driven benchmark models, the results of which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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.

Last month, the ScanPyramids project, led by a team of researchers from the University of Cairo's Faculty of Engineering in Egypt and the HIP Institute in France, announced that they'd used muon imaging to discover a large void hidden deep inside the Khufu's Pyramid (also known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, since it's the big one). Nobody knows what's inside, or if there's anything inside at all, or even if maybe that's where the Stargate is stashed. Obviously there's a lot of interest in what may or may not be hiding out in here, and it could help solve mysteries like how and why exactly the pyramids were built. The problem is that (understandably) we're not going to just start blowing holes in the Great Pyramid to see what's going on. In 2002, Egyptologists used a custom exploration robot (made by iRobot, in fact) to explore a small shaft leading out of the Queen's Chamber in the Great Pyramid that was sealed by a door.

Last month, the ScanPyramids project, led by a team of researchers from the University of Cairo's Faculty of Engineering in Egypt and the HIP Institute in France, announced that they'd used muon imaging to discover a large void hidden deep inside the Khufu's Pyramid (also known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, since it's the big one). Nobody knows what's inside, or if there's anything inside at all, or even if maybe that's where the Stargate is stashed. Obviously there's a lot of interest in what may or may not be hiding out in here, and it could help solve mysteries like how and why exactly the pyramids were built. The problem is that (understandably) we're not going to just start blowing holes in the Great Pyramid to see what's going on. In 2002, Egyptologists used a custom exploration robot (made by iRobot, in fact) to explore a small shaft leading out of the Queen's Chamber in the Great Pyramid that was sealed by a door. Rather than try to open the door, likely destroying it in the process, the robot drilled a tiny hole just large enough to poke a camera through in an effort to do the minimum amount of irreversible damage to the only wonder of the ancient world that we've got left.