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Accommodating unobservability to control flight attitude with optic flow.

Guido C H E de Croon1, Julien J G Dupeyroux2, Christophe De Wagter2

  • 1Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory, Control and Simulation, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands. g.c.h.e.decroon@tudelft.nl.

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Flying insects may not need a gravity sense for attitude control. This study shows how optic flow and motion models enable stable flight control in robots, potentially inspiring insect-scale autonomous flying robots.

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Area of Science:

  • Robotics
  • Bio-inspired engineering
  • Control systems

Background:

  • Flying robots typically use accelerometers for attitude estimation.
  • Flying insects lack a clear sense of gravity, and their attitude stabilization mechanisms are not fully understood.
  • The reliance of insects on internal gravity estimation for attitude control remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate attitude estimation from optic flow combined with a motion model in the absence of a gravity sense.
  • To analyze the stability of such a control system, particularly during unobservable conditions.
  • To explore the potential for accelerometer-less autopilots in insect-scale robots and to hypothesize about insect attitude control.

Main Methods:

  • Developing a control system that extracts attitude from optic flow and a motion model relating attitude to acceleration direction.
  • Analyzing system stability, including conditions of unobservability.
  • Conducting experiments with flying robots and bio-inspired flapping-wing robots to validate the approach.

Main Results:

  • Attitude can be extracted from optic flow and a motion model, even with temporary unobservability.
  • The control system demonstrates stable, albeit slightly oscillatory, attitude control in flying robots.
  • High-frequency oscillations in flapping-wing robots enhance attitude observability.

Conclusions:

  • A novel approach for attitude control using optic flow and motion models is presented, offering a potential alternative to accelerometers.
  • This method enables stable flight control in robots and provides insights into insect flight dynamics.
  • The findings support the development of insect-scale autonomous flying robots and generate hypotheses for insect attitude estimation and control.