On-board state estimation is a persistent challenge to fielding unmanned aerial systems (UAS), particularly when global positioning system (GPS) measurements are not available. The dominant estimation tool remains the extended Kalman filter (EKF) applied to an inertial measurement unit (IMU). The growing availability of low-cost commercial-grade IMUs raises questions about how to best improve sensor readings into an estimate when measurements are available from multiple IMUs. This paper evaluates four different approaches to attitude estimation from multiple IMU measurements and their application in high dynamic motion. The four approaches are fusion of measurements (virtual IMU), fusion of state estimates (Federated KF), feedback fusion state estimate (Feedback Federated KF), and an EKF design incorporating the additional measurements (Augmented KF); these correspond to fusion before, within, or after state estimation. The performance of the approaches are quantified for varying IMU number theoretically and experimentally. The experiments use on-board autopilot hardware implementations of the estimators during maneuvers in a motion capture volume and flights on-board an Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) implementation, with the peak and root-mean-square (RMS) errors used to quantify accuracy. The RMS error results indicate that the feedback federated Kalman Filter using five IMUs returns 38% compared to general federated Kalman Filter using 37% accuracy improvement over a single IMU. This improvement compares to a 19% improvement for virtual IMU and 9% improvement for the Augmented KF respectively. These results indicate that both the Federated KF approach achieves the lowest RMS error relative to the virtual IMU and augmented KF approaches and inform the design of multi-IMU UAS pose estimators.

Flying social insects can provide model systems for in-flight interactions in computationally-constrained aerial robot swarms. The social interactions in flying insects may be chemically modulated and quantified via recent measurement advancements able to simultaneously make precise measurements of insect wing and body motions. This paper presents the first in-flight quantitative measurements of ethanol-exposed honey bee body and wing kinematics in archival literature. Four high-speed cameras (9000 frames/sec) were used to record the wing and body motions of flying insects (Apis mellifera) and automated analysis was used to extract 9000 frame/sec measurements of honey bees’ wing and body motions through data association, hull reconstruction, and segmentation. The kinematic changes induced by exposure to incremental ethanol concentrations from 0% to 5% were studied using statistical analysis tools. Analysis considered trial-wise mean and maximum values and gross wingstroke parameters, and tested deviations for statistical significance using Welch’s t-test and Cohen’s d test. The results indicate a decrease in maximal heading and pitch rates of the body, and that roll rate is affected at high concentrations (5%). The wingstroke effects include a stroke frequency decrease and stroke amplitude increase for 2.5% or greater concentrations, gradual stroke inclination angle increase up to 2.5% concentration, and a more planar wingstroke with increasing concentration according to bulk wingstroke analysis. These ethanol-exposure effects provide a basis to separate ethanol exposure and neighbor effects in chemically mediated interaction studies.

Practical aerial swarm applications are limited by the need to provide fast, robust feedback. To consider how biological agents incorporate visual feedback in multiagent environments, this study extends a well-developed model of bioinspired visual feedback for individual agent to feedback in multiagent dynamic environments. A multiagent visual model is developed and analyzed for an individual agent operating in a group of other agents. The theoretical model indicates a stable equilibrium trajectory within the neighboring agents. When a minority of agents conducting bioinspired visual feedback are introduced into a planar swarm simulation, results show robustness of agents to perturbations from reference condition. The bioinspired feedback rule is implemented experimentally using ground microbots for two cases identified by a theoretical observability condition. The experimental performance of the single agent in an established swarm is consistent with the theoretical stability and observability predictions. The results indicate insect visuomotor response can help participate in established swarms, and indicate the importance of optic flow input in maintaining group motion.

Individual insects flying in crowded assemblies perform complex aerial maneuvers by sensing and feeding back neighbor measurements to small changes in their wing motions. To understand the individual feedback rules that permit these fast, adaptive behaviors in group flight, both experimental preparations inducing crowded flight and high-speed tracking systems capable of tracking both body motions and more subtle wing motion changes for multiple insects in simultaneous flight are needed. This measurement capability extends tracking beyond the previous focus on individual insects to multiple insects. This paper describes an experimental preparation that induces crowded insect flight in more naturalistic conditions (a laboratory-outdoor transition tunnel) and directly compares the resulting flight performance to traditional flight enclosures. Measurements are made possible via the introduction of a multi-agent high speed insect tracker called Hi-VISTA, which provides a capability to track wing and body motions of multiple insects using high speed cameras (9000–12 500 fps). Processing steps consist of automatic background identification, data association, hull reconstruction, segmentation, and feature measurement. To improve the biological relevance of laboratory experiments and develop a platform for interaction studies, this paper applies the Hi-VISTA measurement system to Apis mellifera foragers habituated to transit flights through the transparent transition environment. Binary statistical analysis (Welch’s t-test, Cohen’s d effect size) of 95 flight trajectories is presented, quantifying the differences between flights in an unobstructed environment and in a confined tunnel volume. The results indicate that body pitch angle, heading rate, flapping frequency, and vertical speed (heave) are each affected by confinement, and other flight variables show minor or statistically insignificant changes. These results form a baseline as swarm tracking and analysis begins to isolate the effects of neighbors from environmental enclosures, and improve the connection of high speed insect laboratory experiments to outdoor field experiments.