A two-directional 1-gram visual motion sensor inspired by the fly's eye

• Roubieu Frédéric
• Expert Fabien
• Sabiron Guillaume
• Ruffier Franck

• Biomedical optical imaging
• Lenses
• Motion measurement
• Optical sensors
• Sensor phenomena and characterization
• Visualization
• 1-gram insect based device
• MAV
• Autopilots
• Elementary motion detector
• Insect-based visual motion sensors
• Lightweight low-power sensors
• Maximum permissible avionic payload
• Microaerial vehicle
• Natural scene
• Navigation safety
• Sensor fusion method
• Visual motion measurement
• Aerospace safety
• Aircraft navigation
• Autonomous aerial vehicles
• Avionics
• Image fusion
• Image motion analysis
• Natural scenes
• Robot vision
• Bio-inspiration
• Fly
• Motion sensor
• Neuromorphic
• Optic flow
• Vision

Optic flow based autopilots for Micro-Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) need lightweight, low-power sensors to be able to fly safely through unknown environments. The new tiny 6-pixel visual motion sensor presented here meets these demanding requirements in term of its mass, size and power consumption. This 1-gram, low-power, fly-inspired sensor accurately gauges the visual motion using only this 6-pixel array with two different panoramas and illuminance conditions. The new visual motion sensor's output results from a smart combination of the information collected by several 2-pixel Local Motion Sensors (LMSs), based on the \enquote{time of travel} scheme originally inspired by the common housefly's Elementary Motion Detector (EMD) neurons. The proposed sensory fusion method enables the new visual sensor to measure the visual angular speed and determine the main direction of the visual motion without any prior knowledge. By computing the median value of the output from several LMSs, we also ended up with a more robust, more accurate and more frequently refreshed measurement of the 1-D angular speed.