Abstract
In this paper we present a study of the dynamics and control of a six degree of freedom platform suspended via driven cables under an airship. Associating airship and cable driven parallel manipulator, this new design offers novel possibilities for cargo airship to load and unload cargo without landing. The vertical take-off and landing capabilities of the airships give them an additional advantage over other means of transporting heavy loads. In this work, a robust sliding mode control, capable of auto-piloting and controlling the suspended platform, is developed. Besides, the dynamic model of suspended platform must be clarified before designing a controller. The feature of the proposed control system is that the unknown disturbance terms of the airship motion in the suspended platform dynamic are explicitly incorporated into control system design without any simplifying assumption. Furthermore, numerical simulation results are presented and a stability analysis is provided to confirm the accuracy of our derivations