Flight Control in Complex Environments: From Insects to Robots ‒ LIS ‐ EPFL

Flying robots are very useful for tasks such as aerial mapping, fast exploration, video footage and monitoring of buildings. However, autonomous missions are usually constrained to high altitude flights above flat surfaces in order to avoid collisions. Traditional methods for collision-free navigation require large resources and limit the payload of robots.

On the other hand, flying insects are able to navigate safely and efficiently using low quality vision as their main sensory input. Ideally, robots could adopt insects strategies, but little is known about the way insects turn visual stimuli into muscular actuation during flight. This precludes a direct implementation of insect flight control into robots and forces roboticists to guess appropriate strategies.

In this thesis, we aim to investigate, develop and implement insect-inspired control strategies in flying robots for goal-oriented navigation in complex environments. We will start by exploring insect sensing and actuation through experiments with bumblebees. Then, we will model the insect’s flight control strategies. This model will be tested in simulation and implemented in a custom designed flying robot. Through experiments in natural environments, we will characterize the efficiency of our model for goal-oriented collision-free navigation.

Publications

Empathetic Conversational Agents for Distress Support

K. A. Welivita / Director(s) : P. Pu Faltings

Lausanne: EPFL

2023

p. 203.

DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9810

Publications

Empathetic Conversational Agents for Distress Support

Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption: from Theory to Practice

Wind, Hail, and Climate Extremes: Modelling and Attribution Studies for Environmental Data

Materials engineering for improved stability of perovskite solar cells

Green Cryptography and Other Optimisations

Nanotechnology enabled modulation of T cell immunity for cancer treatment

Atomic-Level Structure and Thermodynamic and Kinetic Modelling of Zinc-Modified C-S-H

NMR Crystallography in the Big Data Era: New Methods and Applications Powered by Machine Learning

Retraction-based numerical methods for continuation, interpolation and time integration on manifolds

Novel quantitative bioengineered tools to track human bone marrow niche cellular constituents in health and disease

Exploring the interplay of molecular pattern and valency for selective interactions at the bio-interface

Topological Effects in Carbon-based Two-dimensional Nanostructures

Modeling, Optimization and Design of High Power Medium Frequency Transformers

The biofilm ecology of proglacial floodplain streams

Metabolism of the symbiotic jellyfish Cassiopea in a changing environment

Krot istorii v spyachke

Yevgeny Polivanov: Beyond Formalism?

Positive Definite Completions and Continuous Graphical Models

Deep Generative Models for Autonomous Driving: from Motion Forecasting to Realistic Image Synthesis

Hardware-Software co-design Methodologies for Edge AI Optimization

Relating health benefits of water, sanitation, and hygiene services with the context of urban informal settlements: lessons from Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya

MultiModN- Multimodal, Multi-Task, Interpretable Modular Networks

Making a Model for the Green Revolution: A Controversial Beginning

La Oficina de Estudios Especiales y la Revolución Verde 80 años después

Strengthening farmers’ seed systems to enhance agricultural resilience

Infrastructuring bureaucracy: Putting AI to (net)work in public administration

Equilibrium β-limits dependence on bootstrap current in classical stellarators

Nonlinear saturation of resistive tearing modes in a cylindrical tokamak with and without solving the dynamics

A multimodal measurement of the impact of deepfakes on the ethical reasoning and affective reactions of students

Things that Talk: On a new perspective for engaging with scientific instruments

Proposed residual stress model for hot‐rolled wide flange steel cross sections

Drawing in Court: their use in patent cases and their impact on the creation of case law (1780-1850)

Writing/Drawing/Modeling Inventions: Regimes of Description and the ‘Intellectual’ in IP, France-United States ca. 1790-1850

Carbon budgets at the component scale and their impacts on design choices: the façade as a case study

All-glass miniature GHz repetition rate femtosecond laser cavity

Benign Overfitting in Deep Neural Networks under Lazy Training

What can online reinforcement learning with function approximation benefitfrom general coverage conditions

A VR-based workflow to assess perception of daylit views-out with a focus on dynamism and immersion

Tone-mapping requirements in real-time videos for studying the dynamism of views-out in virtual reality

Digital upcycling of concrete rubbles – video

From concrete waste to walls An investigation of reclamation and digital technologies for new load-bearing structures

From concrete waste to walls An investigation of reclamation and digital technologies for new load-bearing structures

Acoustic Levitation apparatus (Robotics Practicals)

How to Achieve Large-Area Ultra-Fast Operation of MoS 2 Monolayer Flash Memories?

Database of Residual Stress Measurements on Hot-rolled Wide Flange Steel Cross Sections

Euclid preparation XXVI. The Euclid Morphology Challenge: Towards structural parameters for billions of galaxies

Gaia Data Release 3: The extragalactic content

Exploring and mapping the diffuse interstellar band at 862nm

Averages of b-hadron, c-handron, and t-lepton properties as of 2021

Gaia Data Release 3 Summary of the variability processing and analysis

Quantum process tomography with unsupervised learning and tensor networks

Down-conversion of a single photon as a probe of many-body localization

Feasibility of the EDICAM camera for runaway electron detection in JT-60SA disruptions

Linking connectivity of deep brain stimulation of nucleus accumbens area with clinical depression improvements: a retrospective longitudinal case series

Experimental and numerical investigations of electron transport enhancement by electron-cyclotron plasma-wave interaction in tokamaks

How accurate are flux-tube (local) gyrokinetic codes in modeling energetic particle effects on core turbulence?

Out of their minds? Externalist challenges for using AI in forensic psychiatry

A fluoropolymer bifunctional solid membrane interface for improving the discharge duration in aqueous Al-air batteries

A Full-Wave Reference Simulator for Computing Surface Reflectance

A review of the security vulnerabilities and countermeasures in the Internet of Things solutions: A bright future for the Blockchain

Pathway and directional specificity of Hebbian plasticity in the cortical visual motion processing network

Protocol for live imaging of intracellular nanoscale structures using atomic force microscopy with nanoneedle probes

Multiomic analysis of HER2-enriched and AR-positive breast carcinoma with apocrine differentiation and an oligometastatic course: a case report

Predicting party switching through machine learning and open data

Seeing Photons in Color

Inflammatory mitochondrial nucleic acids as drivers of pathophysiology

cgNA plus web : A Visual Interface to the cgNA plus Sequence-dependent Statistical Mechanics Model of Double-stranded Nucleic Acids

Arvin: Greybox Fuzzing Using Approximate Dynamic CFG Analysis

Pipelined Architecture for Soft-Decision Iterative Projection Aggregation Decoding for RM Codes

Chlorination of amides: Kinetics and mechanisms of formation of N-chloramides and their reactions with phenolic compounds

Polydimethylsiloxane based soft polymer optical fibers: From the processing-property relationship to pressure sensing applications

Improving planar optode lifetime: encapsulation and optical release of pH-sensing optodes and assessment of their lifetime in situ

Physiological Demands of Exergames in Older Adults- A Systematic Literature Review

Adaptive Symplectic Model Order Reduction Of Parametric Particle-Based Vlasov-Poisson Equation

Modeling local thermal responses of individuals: Validation of advanced human thermo-physiology models

Detecting whether a stochastic process is finitely expressed in a basis

Tissue clearing applications in memory engram research

Expansion Work Recovery of Hydrogen for a FC-Truck-Tentative Design of an Expansion Machine

Light-Driven Thermo-Optical Effects in Nanoresonator Arrays