V3I6P119

Design and Simulation of an Autopilot and Guidance Law for an Unmanned Airship

Nguyen Manh Trung*¹

Abstract

Unmanned airships have attracted increasing attention in applications such as environmental monitoring, aerial surveillance, disaster assessment, and communication relay due to their long endurance, low operating cost, and high payload capacity. However, their low cruising speed and large aerodynamic surface make them highly susceptible to external disturbances, particularly wind gusts, which pose significant challenges to flight stability and trajectory tracking. This paper presents the design and simulation of an integrated autopilot and guidance system for an unmanned airship. The proposed autopilot consists of cascaded control loops for attitude, altitude, and velocity regulation, while the guidance law generates desired heading and altitude commands to enable accurate waypoint tracking. A nonlinear dynamic model of the airship is established to describe its translational and rotational motions. Based on this model, the autopilot controller is designed to ensure stable flight performance, and the guidance law is integrated with the autopilot to provide smooth trajectory following. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated through MATLAB/Simulink simulations under different flight scenarios, including straight-line tracking, waypoint navigation, and wind disturbance conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the integrated guidance and autopilot system achieves accurate path-following performance, maintains flight stability, and exhibits strong robustness against external disturbances. The proposed design provides a practical and effective solution for autonomous navigation of unmanned airships and offers a foundation for future research on advanced intelligent guidance and flight control systems.

Keywords:

Unmanned airship; Feedback linearization; Autopilot; Guidance law; Nonlinear flight control; Trajectory tracking.