Robustly station-keeping for the airship subject to stratospheric wind

The problem of stratospheric airship´s robustly station-keeping is investigated. With a simplified one-dimensional aerodynamics model, the station-keeping is formulated as a nonlinear feedback control problem. A PID controller is proposed while the stability of the closed-loop is analyzed. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that with the controller, the airship can be robustly kept at the expected point against the uncertainty of the airship´s parameters and the wind velocity, which may vary from 0 to 40m/s.