Fly-inspired visual steering of an ultralight indoor aircraft

We aim at developing autonomous microflyers capable of navigating within houses or small indoor environments using vision as the principal source of information. Due to severe weight and energy constraints, inspiration is taken from the fly for the selection of sensors, for signal processing, and for the control strategy. The current 30-g prototype is capable of autonomous steering in a 16×16 m textured environment. This paper describes models and algorithms which allow for efficient course stabilization and collision avoidance using optic flow and inertial information.