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

Radio as Architecture: Notes toward the Redefinition of the Berlin Walls

A. Thiermann

War Zones: gta papers; Zurich: gta Verlag, 2019. p. 134.

ISBN : 978-3-85676-390-9

DOI : 10.54872/gta-pap-2

Publications

Radio as Architecture: Notes toward the Redefinition of the Berlin Walls

Radio-Activities

The Ground as Forensic Evidence: Alfredo Thiermann in Conversation with Eyal Weizman

White on White

What Does an Invisible Architecture Look Like

Dynamics of the Void

Dynamics of the Void

Artefact Nr. I

Artefact Nr. I

Artefacto Nr. I

Artefact Nr. I.

Characterization of the gut-bone marrow axis through bile acid signaling

Studies of crystal collimation for heavy ion operation at the LHC

Engineering novel protein interactions with therapeutic potential using deep learning-guided surface design

Querying the Digital Archive of Science: Distant Reading, Semantic Modelling and Representation of Knowledge

Hybrid organic/metal-oxide shells on semiconductor nanocrystals via colloidal atomic layer deposition

Electrical and Optical Manifestations of Flat Band Physics in Van der Waals Materials

Plasmonically enhanced molecular junctions for investigation of atomic-scale fluctuations in self-assembled monolayers

Exact Obstacle Avoidance for Robots in Complex and Dynamic Environments Using Local Modulation

S-acylation and lipid exchange at the ER-Golgi membrane contact sites regulate pathogen entry in human cells

Serial Dependence in Human Visual Perception and Decision-Making

Data-Driven Methods for Controller Design in Atomic Force Microscopy

Aesthetics of Extinction, Aesthetics of Conservation: the Chilean Pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale

Quantum-mechanical effects in photoluminescence from thin crystalline gold films

Quantifying the effects of rainfall temporal variability on landscape evolution processes

Towards a metabolic theory of catchments: scaling of water and carbon fluxes with size

Biohybrid Superorganisms—On the Design of a Robotic System for Thermal Interactions With Honeybee Colonies

Dataset to accompany publication “Quantum-mechanical effects in photoluminescence from thin crystalline gold films”

Impact of CO2-rich seawater injection on the flow properties of basalts

Material Reform: Building for a Post-Carbon Future

Architecture of a decentralised decision support system for futuristic beehives

Comment une situation d’investigation policière fait évoluer les conceptions d’élèves de troisième sur l’ADN

TSLAM: a tag-based object-centered monocular navigation system for augmented manual woodworking.

Water weakening and the compressive brittle strength of carbonates: Influence of fracture toughness and static friction

Integration of the Pilatus3 detector for soft X-ray diagnostics on TCV

Siloxide tripodal ligands as a scaffold for stabilizing lanthanides in the +4 oxidation state

High-Permittivity Polysiloxanes for Bright, Stretchable Electroluminescent Devices

An extension of the stochastic sewing lemma and applications to fractional stochastic calculus

A bridge between trust and control: computational workflows meet automated battery cycling

Capsizing due to friction-induced twist in the failure of stopper knots

A CTCF-dependent mechanism underlies the Hox timer relation to a segmented body plan

Gradient High-Q Dielectric Metasurfaces for Broadband Sensing and Control of Vibrational Light-Matter Coupling

SOMOphilic alkyne vs radical-polar crossover approaches: The full story of the azido-alkynylation of alkenes

Dielectric elastomer actuator-based valveless pump as Fontan failure assist device: introduction and preliminary study

Tree diversity reduces variability in sapling survival under drought

Probing structural and dynamic properties of MAPbCl3 hybrid perovskite using Mn2+ EPR

Benchmarking machine-readable vectors of chemical reactions on computed activation barriers

Quantum radio astronomy: Data encodings and quantum image processing

Comprehensive Memory Safety Validation: An Alternative Approach to Memory Safety

A Method of Moments Estimator for Interacting Particle Systems and their Mean Field Limit

A setup for hard x-ray time-resolved resonant inelastic x-ray scattering at SwissFEL

An aircraft assembly process formalism and verification method based on semantic modeling and MBSE

Stellar Metallicities and Gradients in the Isolated, Quenched Low-mass Galaxy Tucana

Twisted pair transmission line coil – a flexible, self-decoupled and robust element for 7 T MRI

Equilibria in Network Constrained Energy Markets

Minimal regret state estimation of time-varying systems

Follow the Clairvoyant: an Imitation Learning Approach to Optimal Control

3D Printing of Double Network Granular Elastomers with Locally Varying Mechanical Properties

Dopant-additive synergism enhances perovskite solar modules

Proliferation-driven mechanical compression induces signalling centre formation during mammalian organ development

Spin-Reorientation-Driven Linear Magnetoelectric Effect in Topological Antiferromagnet Cu3TeO6

Is There a Special Role for Ovarian Hormones in the Pathogenesis of Lobular Carcinoma?

Stick-slip-to-stick transition of liquid oscillations in a U-shaped tube

Opportunities and challenges in design and optimization of protein function

An Annotated Corpus of Tonal Piano Music from the Long 19th Century

Impact of beam-coupling impedance on the Schottky spectrum of bunched beam

Gaussian universality of perceptrons with random labels

Diffusion of brain metabolites highlights altered brain microstructure in type C hepatic encephalopathy: a 9.4 T preliminary study

Teaching about non-deterministic physics: an almost forgotten fundamental contribution of Marie Curie

The angiogenic growth of cities

Learning Weakly Convex Regularizers for Convergent Image-Reconstruction Algorithms

Euclid: Improving the efficiency of weak lensing shear bias calibration

Randomized flexible GMRES with deflated restarting

An interior penalty coupling strategy for isogeometric non-conformal Kirchhoff-Love shell patches

Stress tolerance of lightweight glass-free PV modules for vehicle integration

On the Arithmetic and Geometric Fusion of Beliefs for Distributed Inference

Alpha1-antitrypsin improves survival in murine abdominal sepsis model by decreasing inflammation and sequestration of free heme

Quantitative prediction of crystallization in laser powder bed fusion of a Zr-based bulk metallic glass with high oxygen content

A cut-cell method for the numerical simulation of 3D multiphase flows with strong interfacial effects