A quasi-panoramic bio-inspired eye for flying parallel to walls

In this study, a quasi-panoramic bio-inspired eye dedicated to optic flow measurement on board micro flying robots is presented. It will allow future micro flying robots to mimic honeybees' navigational tasks which work without any metric sensors. An innovative optic flow-based algorithm was tested in the horizontal plane to measure the robot's incidence angle when travelling along a wall. Experimental results achieved while using a moving texture showed that our algorithm is able to measure the local visual heading with respect to a tapered wall with an error of 3° and an accuracy of 3° on average. Our bio-inspired eye will be implemented in the near future on board a micro quadrotor to “sense and avoid” obstacles in a GPS-denied environment.