A micro-aerial vehicle (MAV) is a kind of minor version of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which has a size restriction. MAVs have a wide range of applications in commercial, research, government, and military purposes. UAVs are valuable tools due to some of their useful advantages such as safety, fl exibility, relatively low cost of ownership, and ease of operation. Bio-inspired robots have been presented that can both fly and move on land, either by jumping or walking. One of the most critical parts of such vehicles (MAVs) is the vision (visual perception) system. In this chapter, different technologies for designing the vision systems for bio-inspired MAVs will be reviewed.

Chapter Contents:

• 8.1 Introduction
• 8.1.1 Fixed-wing MAVs
• 8.1.1.1 Longitudinal dynamics
• 8.1.1.2 Lateral dynamic
• 8.1.2 Rotary-wing MAVs
• 8.1.3 Flapping-wing or biomimetic MAVs
• 8.1.4 Hybrid MAVs
• 8.2 Computer vision as a biological inspiration
• 8.3 The role of sensing in MAVs
• 8.3.1 Pose-estimation sensors
• 8.3.2 Environmental awareness sensors
• 8.3.3 Sonar ranging sensor
• 8.3.4 Infrared-range sensors
• 8.3.5 Thermal imaging
• 8.3.6 LIDAR
• 8.3.7 Cameras
• 8.4 Illumination
• 8.5 Navigation, pathfinding, and orientation
• 8.6 Communication and polarisation-inspired machine vision applications
• 8.6.1 Robot orientation and navigation
• 8.6.2 Polarisation-opponent sensors
• 8.7 CCD cameras and applications in machine vision
• 8.8 Error modelling of environments with uncertainties
• 8.9 Further work and future trends
• 8.9.1 MAV challenges
• 8.9.2 Proposed solutions for MAV design challenges
• 8.9.3 New frontiers in sensors
• 8.10 Conclusion
• References

Inspec keywords: robot vision; autonomous aerial vehicles; microrobots

Other keywords: UAV; bio-inspired robots; microaerial vehicles; vision systems; unmanned aerial vehicles; visual perception; bio-inspired MAV

Subjects: Computer vision and image processing techniques; Aerospace control; Telerobotics; Optical, image and video signal processing; Mobile robots