Autonomous Blimp – ECE 476 Microcontroller Design Project

Benjamin Tang and Rishi Ramchand are Cornell University students who made an Autonomous Blimp as their final project in the ECE 476 Microcontroller Design course. The project uses a GP2Y0D340 IR sensor to see if there is an obstacle in the way that needs to be maneuvered around. That IR sensor looks to be the type that is normally found in the automatic water taps that are found in most modern commercial bathrooms, with a 2 foot range I can think of lots of cool uses for the device…

“Our project controls a propeller-driven toy blimp; it keeps the blimp moving in a straight line if its path is clear, and otherwise navigates it around obstacles in its path. To accomplish the former task, our circuit uses a gyroscope to detect horizontal rotation and compensates for it by adjusting the propeller speed. Obstacle detection is performed using a digital infrared proximity sensor. The central challenge of our project was to build a circuit that was sufficiently light to be carried onboard the blimp, subject of course to the constraints of budget.”