Towards flapping wing robot visual perception: Opportunities and challenges

The development of perception systems for bio-inspired flapping wing robots, or ornithopters, is very challenging due to their fast flying maneuvers and the high amount of vibrations and motion blur originated by the wing flapping. Visual sensors have been widely used in aerial robot perception due to their size, weight, and energy consumption capabilities. This paper analyzes the issues and challenges for vision sensors onboard ornithopter robots. Two visual sensors are evaluated: a monocular camera and an event-based camera. First, the pros and cons of integrating different sensors on flapping wing robots are studied. Second, the paper experimentally evaluates the impact of wing flapping frequency on both sensors using experiments with the ornithopter developed in the EU-funded GRIFFIN ERC project.