Design and Construction of a Lighter than Air Robot Blimp

This paper describes the design and construction of a lighter than air robot blimp (LTARB).The blimp has both shared autonomy and fully autonomous modes.The blimp is designed to fly indoors and play a game called Defend the Republic, and it is sponsored by the United States Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research.In this game, blimps fly around and capture floating balloons.The blimps then score by finding a goal and putting the balloons through the goal.The blimps' major sub-components, described in this paper, include: 1) Airframe, 2) Buoyancy, 3) Propulsion, 4) Balloon capture and scoring, 5) Avionics, and 6) Guidance and Control.This project has been integrated into multiple Baylor University engineering courses.