Building an Arti cial Bird: Goals and Accomplishments of the Robur Project

The ROBUR project aims at developing a series of capacities that are inspired from those of birds, bats or insects, and that might contribute to the autonomy of UAV. However, although the ultimate goal is to integrate these capacities in a single apping-wing platform, several preliminary studies described in this paper concern more classical platforms like planes or helicopters. The capacities under study can be grouped in three di erent categories: appingwing ight, re exes and high-level behaviours. Research e orts in the rst category concern the understanding of the aerodynamics of apping-wing ight, and aim at designing appropriate morphologies and controllers that may serve to implement the corresponding behaviour on a robotic platform. The second category concerns the implementation of some re exes, like those of obstacle-avoidance or speed-regulation, likely to contribute to an UAV's safety in its environment. As for high-level behaviours, they cover a wider range of capacities. Their role is to turn the UAV from a mere teleoperated engine to a fully autonomous robot. This entails capacities like being able to spare its energy expenditures, to know its current localization, and to decide what to do at every moment. This article describes the major results already obtained within the framework of this project.