Landing is an important but understudied behavior that flying animals must perform constantly. In still air, insects decelerate smoothly prior to landing by employing the relatively simple strategy of maintaining a constant rate of image expansion during their approach. However, it is unclear whether insects employ this strategy when faced with challenging flight environments. Here, we tested t...

Monitoring wide-field surrounding information is essential for vision-based autonomous navigation in micro-air-vehicles (MAV). Our image-cube (iCube) module, which consists of multiple sensors that are facing different angles in 3-D space, can be applied to the wide-field of view optic flows estimation ( -Compound eyes) and to attitude control ( Ocelli) in the Micro Autonomous Systems and Techn...

The derivation of the nonlinear dynamics of flapping wing micro air vehicles is presented. Simulation results investigate differences in the position and orientation of the body due to differing wing masses and aerodynamic modeling choices. The flapping wing micro air vehicle is modeled as a system of three rigid bodies: a body and two wings. Themass of the wings, and their associatedmass and i...

In this paper, we address the problem of globally localizing and tracking the pose of a camera-equipped micro aerial vehicle (MAV) flying in urban streets at low altitudes without GPS. An image-based global positioning system is introduced to localize the MAV with respect to the surrounding buildings. We propose a novel airground image-matching algorithm to search the airborne image of the MAV ...

This thesis presents an approach to near-optimal target localization for small and micro unmanned aerial vehicles using a family of pre-computed parameterized trajectories. These trajectories are pre-computed for a set of nominal target locations uniformly distributed over the sensor field of view and stored offline in a non-dimensionalized form. In the first part of this research, the trajecto...

The wing motion in free flight has been described for insects ranging from 1 to 100 mm in wingspan. To support the body weight, the wings typically produce 2-3 times more lift than can be accounted for by conventional aerodynamics. Some insects use the fling mechanism: the wings are clapped together and then flung open before the start of the downstroke, creating a lift-enhancing vortex around ...

Aerial recovery of micro air vehicles (MAVs) presents a challenging problem in multi-vehicle dynamics and control. This paper presents a method for recovering MAVs in ight using a mothership and towed drogue, in which the mothership executes an orbit that places the drogue in a stable, slower orbit that can be tracked by a MAV. A method for modeling the dynamics of the mothership-cabledrogue sy...

A flapping-type micro air vehicle(MAV) is one of the vehicles attracting the MAV engineers for its diverse capabilities such as agility, perching and even hover that are advantageous when performing missions in varying environments. While the flapping MAV has a history of research and development, it has considerably been relying on developers' trial and errors, and empirical skills. Particular...

Unmanned micro air vehicles (MAVs) will play an important role in future reconnaissance and search and rescue applications. In order to conduct persistent surveillance and to conserve energy, MAVs need the ability to land, and they need the ability to enter (ingress) buildings and other structures to conduct reconnaissance. To be safe and practical under a wide range of environmental conditions...

There is a growing need in both the military and civilian sectors for aircraft with many unique capabilities. This includes Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs, which have been defined by the military to be any airplane with a wingspan of less then two feet. However, the small characteristics of MAVs makes them quite difficult to control. Furthermore, many of the roles MAVs are being targeted for inclu...