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

Electrically tunable giant Nernst effect in two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures

G. Pasquale; Z. Sun; G. Migliato Marega; K. Watanabe; T. Taniguchi et al.

Nature Nanotechnology

2024-07-02

DOI : 10.1038/s41565-024-01717-y

Publications

Electrically tunable giant Nernst effect in two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures

Les fumées des trains à vapeur, un débordement industriel et professionnel (France, Grande-Bretagne, années 1860-1930)

Infectious disease spread in connected communities

Diving into the heterogeneity of the visual system

Impact of Mitofusin 2 in the Nucleus Accumbens on motivated behavior and underlying neurobiological mechanisms

Politique du logement à Genève. Revenu des ménages, loyers et prix des logements

How to support students to develop coaching and peer teaching skills

Analysis of a DC Data Center Power Supply with Series-Connected Active and Passive Rectifiers

Medium Voltage Power Electronics Research: Challenges and Opportunities

Numerical study of optical transmission in silver plasmonic square nanohole and its to windows

Alex’s Vision in Functional Quantum Matter

Training a Filter-Based Model of the Cochlea in the Context of Pre-Trained Acoustic Models

Electrodeposition of polyaniline on reduced graphene oxide/cotton yarn with tunable electrochemical performance for flexible textile supercapacitors

Milestones in tumor vascularization and its therapeutic targeting

MXene Inks for High-Throughput Printing of Electronics

Quantification of Native Lignin Structural Features with Gel-Phase 2D-HSQC0 Reveals Lignin Structural Changes During Extraction

Direct high-temperature growth of GaN on Si using trimethylaluminum preflow enabling vertically-conducting heterostructures

Anisotropic Adaptive Finite Elements for a p-Laplacian Problem

Overview of fast particle experiments in the first MAST Upgrade experimental campaigns

Nanocluster Aerosols from Ozone-Human Chemistry Are Dominated by Squalene-Ozone Reactions

Realization of an atomic quantum Hall system in four dimensions

Highly dispersed nanomaterials in polymer matrix via aerosol-jet-based multi-material 3D printing

Developments and applications of the OPTIMADE API for materials discovery, design, and data exchange

Simulations of primary and secondary ice production during an Arctic mixed-phase cloud case from the Ny-Ålesund Aerosol Cloud Experiment (NASCENT) campaign

Single-cell epigenomic reconstruction of developmental trajectories from pluripotency in human neural organoid systems

Permanently magnetized elastomer rotating actuator using traveling waves

Safe Schedule Verification for Urban Air Mobility Networks With Node Closures

A mmWave Low Complexity and Low-Cost Super Wideband Dual-Polarized Aperture Coupled Antenna for 5G Applications

Assessing the Charge Carrier Dynamics at Hybrid Interfaces of Organic Photoanodes for Solar Fuels

Unraveling ice multiplication in winter orographic clouds via in-situ observations, remote sensing and modeling

Joint host-pathogen genomic analysis identifies hepatitis B virus mutations associated with human NTCP and HLA class I variation

The Complete CEERS Early Universe Galaxy Sample: A Surprisingly Slow Evolution of the Space Density of Bright Galaxies at z ∼ 8.5-14.5

Enhancing Efficiency of Industrially-Compatible Monolithic Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cells with Dually-Mixed Self-Assembled Monolayers

The interplay between white adipose tissue, adipokines, and structural gray matter changes

Effects of Photon Recycling and Luminescent Coupling in All-Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells Assessed by Full Opto-electronic Simulation

Sparse autoregressive neural networks for classical spin systems

Tool Developments in the OpenMC Code: Correlated Sampling and Transient Fission Matrix Approach Coupled to OpenFOAM

The high flux nano-X-ray diffraction, fluorescence and imaging beamline ID27 for science under extreme conditions on the ESRF Extremely Brilliant Source

Study of impurity C transport and plasma rotation in negative triangularity on the TCV tokamak

Multi-Frequency Tracking via Group-Sparse Optimal Transport

Revealing the Mechanism Underlying 3D-AFM Imaging of Suspended Structures by Experiments and Simulations

Microkinetic Molecular Volcano Plots for Enhanced Catalyst Selectivity and Activity Predictions

Fast refacing of MR images with a generative neural network lowers re-identification risk and preserves volumetric consistency

Exciton migration in two-dimensional materials

Strengthening of edge prism dislocations in Mg-Zn by cross-core diffusion

Improving the photoelectrocatalytic efficiency of CuWO4 through molybdenum for tungsten substitution and coupling with BiVO4

Stabilization versus competing de-metalation, trans-metalation and (cyclo)-dehydrogenation of Pd porphyrins at a copper surface

Influence of Si3N4 fillers and pyrolysis profile on the microstructure of additively manufactured silicon carbonitride ceramics derived from polyvinylsilazane

Intermediate complexity atmospheric modeling in complex terrain: is it right?

Hierarchical Protofilament Intertwining Rules the Formation of Mixed-Curvature Amyloid Polymorphs

Triarylamine Trisamide Interfacial Modulation for Perovskite Photovoltaics

The autism susceptibility kinase, TAOK2, phosphorylates eEF2 and modulates translation

Value Estimation versus Effort Mobilization: A General Dissociation between Ventromedial and Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex

Mesh-based topology, shape and sizing optimization of ribbed plates

Plasmoid drift and first wall heat deposition during ITER H-mode dual-SPIs in JOREK simulations

Contrasting Views of the Electric Double Layer in Electrochemical CO2 Reduction: Continuum Models vs Molecular Dynamics

DTT toroidal field conductor samples test in Sultan: DC and AC characterization

Measuring and shaping the nutritional environment via food sales logs: case studies of campus-wide food choice and a call to action

Development of Ti-Zr-Mn based AB 2 type metal hydrides alloys for an 865 bar two-stage hydrogen compressor

Estimation of the bar stress based on crack width measurements in reinforced concrete structures

Reactivity of Cyanobacteria Metabolites with Ozone: Multicompound Competition Kinetics

Transdiagnostic markers across the psychosis continuum: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resting state fMRI studies

The Current State of the OBI DICT Project: A Bilingual e-Dictionary of Oracle-Bone Inscriptions with AI Image Recognition

Convalescent human plasma candidate reference materials protect against Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) challenge in an A129 mouse model

Using Negative Control Populations to Assess Unmeasured Confounding and Direct Effects

Machine learning-aided generative molecular design

Subwavelength imaging using a solid-immersion diffractive optical processor

Succinct ordering and aggregation constraints in algebraic array theories

Carbazole Treated Waterproof Perovskite Films with Improved Solar Cell Performance

Oblique streaming waves observed in multipactor-induced plasma discharge above a dielectric surface

Deep learning-based recommendation system for metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)

‘Fraternal-twin’ ferroelectricity: competing polar states in hydrogen-doped samarium nickelate from first principles

Toroidal families and averages of L-functions, I

Time-Delay Cosmography: Measuring the Hubble Constant and Other Cosmological Parameters with Strong Gravitational Lensing

From low-rank retractions to dynamical low-rank approximation and back

Calibrating and validating the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) urban cooling model: case studies in France and the United States

A seasonal snowpack model forced with dynamically downscaled forcing data resolves hydrologically relevant accumulation patterns

An integrated heart-torso electromechanical model for the simulation of electrophysiological outputs accounting for myocardial deformation

Intraday solar irradiance forecasting using public cameras