Post date: Mar 29, 2015 7:28:43 AM
A newly-created compound eye-inspired system may complement existing accelerometer navigation in drones to help improve their autonomous capabilities
Most modern aircraft, cruise missiles, spacecraft – in fact, almost all flying vehicles – use an accelerometer for flight stabilization. Living creatures that fly, on the other hand, rely on their own innate sense of balance determined by environmental observation and inbuilt organ-based systems. Now French researchers have designed a bio-inspired, sight-based system that could be used in conjunction with accelerometers to vastly increase the autonomous capabilities of drones by endowing them with more natural flying abilities.
To this end, researchers working at Aix-Marseilles University's Institut des Sciences du Mouvement Etienne-Jules Marey in France have built a bee-inspired flying robot that incorporates what is known as optic flow visual navigation. This is where, in a compound insect eye, the area to the front of a flying insect remains relatively stable in the sight, but to either side, objects and terrain as they approach in the peripheral areas of vision are observed to give spatial sense to the path of the insect in flight.
To replicate this compound eye arrangement, the researchers built on earlier work in which they participated and created an electronic optic flow sensor incorporating a set of 24 photodiodes in an artificial eye arrangement. In this new research, the eye has been attached to a tethered 80 g (2.8 oz) 470 mm (18.5 in) long drone that the researchers have dubbed "BeeRotor."
More: http://www.gizmag.com/insect-eye-drones-optic-flow-visual-navigation/36508/
The results of this research were recently published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.
The short video below shows the BeeRotor in action.
Source: Aix-Marseilles University's Institut des Sciences du Mouvement Etienne-Jules Marey (PDF)