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.