  The feasibility of performing airborne and ground manipulation, perception,
and reconnaissance using wheeled rovers, unmanned aerial vehicles, CubeSats,
SmallSats and more have been evaluated before. Among all of these solutions,
balloon-based systems possess merits that make them extremely attractive, e.g.,
a simple operation mechanism and endured operation time. However, there are
many hurdles to overcome to achieve robust loitering performance in
balloon-based applications. We attempt to identify design and control
challenges, and propose a novel robotic platform that allows for the
application of balloons in the reconnaissance and perception of Mars craters.
This work briefly covers our suggested actuation and Model Predictive Control
design framework for steering such balloon systems. We propose the coordinated
servoing of multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to regulate tension forces
in a cable-driven balloon to which an underactuated hanging payload is
attached.
