CAREER: Bio-inspired Automatic Control of a Flying Robotic Insect

职业：飞行机器人昆虫的仿生自动控制

• 批准号: 0746638
• 负责人: Robert Wood
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-05-01 至 2014-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0746638&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Bio; inspired; Automatic; Control

The goal of this research is to extract principles of insect flight control and apply them to the stabilization and navigation of a flying robotic insect. Flying insects, and in particular flies, employ a flight control paradigm that is dramatically different from man-made aircraft. While typical fixed-wing aircraft are passively stable in flight, flies exploit unstable flight dynamics to achieve rapid maneuvers. Specialized sensory organs act in concert with small control muscles locally to stabilize the insect. Other sensor information (visual information, for example) can suppress these local feedback loops to initiate rapid turns. The research approach will elucidate the principles of insect flight control in an engineering context and use these to develop a new paradigm for control of an agile vehicle. This will be based upon multiple combinations of sensors and actuators operating high-speed control loops. This research will merge biological observation and experimentation with fly-like robots in a highly-empirical approach. Deliverables include rules for synthesizing insect-inspired flight controllers, models of controller performance, and a demonstration of a robotic fly capable of controlled hovering (with a power tether) using these techniques.This research is a critical step towards the eventual creation of small and agile autonomous robots. Applications for such devices include search and rescue, hazardous environment exploration, reconnaissance, planetary exploration, environmental monitoring, and traffic monitoring. The multidisciplinary nature of this research will serve to broadly educate graduate and undergraduate students and high school science teachers who will participate in this work. Moreover, throughout the course of this work, robotic insects will be used as examples in a new interactive web-based forum aimed at exciting young students and encouraging them to study science and engineering.

这项研究的目的是提取昆虫飞行控制的原理，并将其应用于飞行机器昆虫的稳定和导航。飞行昆虫，特别是苍蝇，采用了与人造飞机截然不同的飞行控制模式。虽然典型的固定翼飞机在飞行中是被动稳定的，但苍蝇利用不稳定的飞行动力学来实现快速机动。专门的感官器官与局部的小控制肌肉协同行动，以稳定昆虫。其他传感器信息(例如视觉信息)可以抑制这些局部反馈环路以启动快速转弯。该研究方法将在工程背景下阐明昆虫飞行控制的原理，并利用这些原理开发一种控制敏捷飞行器的新范例。这将基于运行高速控制回路的传感器和执行器的多种组合。这项研究将以高度经验性的方法，将生物观察和类似苍蝇的机器人的实验结合起来。成果包括合成以昆虫为灵感的飞行控制器的规则，控制器性能的模型，以及使用这些技术演示能够控制悬停的机器人苍蝇。这项研究是最终创造小型和灵活的自主机器人的关键一步。这些设备的应用包括搜救、危险环境探测、侦察、行星探测、环境监测和交通监测。这项研究的多学科性质将有助于广泛教育将参与这项工作的研究生和本科生以及高中科学教师。此外，在整个工作过程中，机器昆虫将被用作一个新的互动网络论坛的范例，旨在激发年轻学生的兴趣，鼓励他们学习科学和工程。