An Ecological Unmanned Hot-Air Balloon for the Agricultural Lands’ Inspection

The current paper presents an ecological design of an autonomous hot-air balloon used for the continuous inspection of large agricultural lands ensuring low power consumption, noise free and long endurance. Currently, growers and cultivators use cars and trucks to examine harvest and trees, evenly to monitor human or animal intruders. These means remain slow, noisy and energy-intensive to produce much more difficulties and pollution problems. Furthermore, farmers receive a limited outlook between trees and plants. For these reasons, and for the imperative need of a rapid and ecological answer, an autonomous unmanned vehicle based on a hot-air balloon powered by photovoltaic panels was proposed to guarantee a permanent supervision of wide fields, and to give a clear expanded view. Therefore, this paper is dedicated to establishment of an autonomous Montgolfier with a detailed description of its different features. Thermodynamic and aerodynamic laws are developed to generate a mathematical model used in the control process. To analyze the system performances, an open-loop numerical simulation is initially carried out with an on/off relay applied to the heater temperature. Then, a feedback control is drawn with a PID to reach a desired altitude. Finally, the PID is replaced by a Sugeno-like fuzzy controller to enhance the balloon performances in a climb phase. The paper is ended with a conclusion and prospects.