Optimal Balloon Navigation
Daniel Beylkin
Plan, June 27, 2008
I am interested in the problem of navigating a balloon autonomously in an optimal way, particularly by minimizing the necessary control. Discrete Mechanics and Optimal Control (DMOC) allows us to compute optimal trajectories for a balloon flight in a wind field. It will be necessary to obtain a simplified model of balloon dynamics to perform the calculations. I will adapt the DMOC tool for three-dimensional, time-dependent wind fields. Doing so will likely require discretizing the trajectory and then utilizing DMOC to compute the optimal trajectory between each discrete time step. If this can be accomplished with a synthesized wind model, it will then be tested for actual wind fields produced by the Weather Reasearch and Forcasing model for the Mojave desert (where a test of a balloon flight is planned to take place in 2009). Time permitting, the next natural step would be to try to solve the same problem though with more realistic information about the wind fields available for the computation.
My most immediate task will be to learn to use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. I will also try to obtain a model of balloon dynamics to be used with DMOC and then adapt it for a two-dimensional, time-dependent wind field before trying to extend it for three dimensions. I am also trying to understand how DMOC primitives is being used for this problem.
