Novel Hyperacute Gimbal Eye for Implementing Precise Hovering and Target Tracking on Board a Quadrotor

  • Manecy Augustin
  • Diperi Julien
  • Boyron Marc
  • Marchand Nicolas
  • Viollet Stéphane

COMM

This paper presents a new minimalist bio-inspired artificial eye of only 24 pixels, able to locate accurately a target placed in its small field of view (10°). The eye is mounted on a very light custom-made gimbal system which makes the eye able to track faithfully a moving target. We have shown here, that our gimbal eye can be embedded onboard a small quadrotor to achieve accurate hovering with respect to a target placed onto the ground. Our aiborne oculomotor system was enhanced with a bio-inspired reflexe in charge to lock efficiently the robot’s gaze onto a target and compensate for the robot’s rotations and disturbances. The use of very few pixels allowed to implement a visual processing algorithm at a refresh rate as high as such as 400 Hz. This high refresh rate coupled to a very fast control of the eye’s orientation allowed the robot to track efficiently a target moving at a speed up to 200°/s.