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Flight or flying is the process by which an object moves through a space without contacting any planetary surface, either within an atmosphere (i.e. air flight or aviation) or through the vacuum of outer space (i.e. spaceflight). This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift associated with gliding or propulsive thrust, aerostatically using buoyancy, or by ballistic movement. Many things can fly, from animal aviators such as birds, bats and insects, to natural gliders/parachuters such as patagial animals, anemochorous seeds and ballistospores, to human inventions like aircraft (airplanes, helicopters, airships, balloons, etc.) and rockets which may propel spacecraft and spaceplanes. The engineering aspects of flight are the purview of aerospace engineering which is subdivided into aeronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through the atmosphere, and astronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through space, and ballistics, the study of the flight of projectiles.

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Flight of mind: Sensorimotor and multisensory embodiment with aviation robotics, flight simulator, and virtual reality

Myeong Seop Song

Normally, humans experience an 'I' as residing in one's body and as the agent of one's actions. In other words, the self is experienced as being inside the body (self-location), as having a body (self-identification), and as being able to control the person's body (agency). Over the last decade, research in cognitive neuroscience has revealed that vestibular signals contribute to such aspects of the embodied self. On the other hand, the influences of embodiment on vestibular sensations have received scant attention. In my thesis, I highlight how changes in multisensory and sensorimotor embodiment impact vestibular sensations. For this purpose, I merged technologies from photorealistic virtual reality (VR), aviation robotics such as a drone, flight simulator, haptics with knowledge of cognitive neuroscience about embodiment and bodily self-consciousness (BSC). The multidisciplinary approaches provide new paradigms to modulate embodiment and investigate related vestibular sensations based on multisensory and sensorimotor mechanisms of BSC. Also, the approaches reveal the relationship between embodiment and vestibular sensations. In Study 1, we have objectively shown the possibility of the duplication of the self by measuring peripersonal space (PPS). To this aim, we provided participants with real-time feedback from a drone-mounted camera that autonomously followed them while they responded to multisensory stimuli on their body and in their environment and walked forward. Our results demonstrate that this setup induces two spatially distinct PPSs in healthy participants: reaction times for visuotactile stimuli were faster around both the physical body and the observed body. In Studies 2 & 3, we have added a photorealistic avatar and a haptic vest to a robotic flight simulator to enable and investigate personalized immersive flight experiences in healthy humans. Study 2 showed that modulations of embodiment using sensorimotor stimulation resulted in enhanced subjective flying experience, better piloting performance, and learning. In Study 3, we showed that multisensory - visual and tactile - stimulation could further increase embodiment and improve piloting performance. Furthermore, in both studies, we found a positive relationship between embodiment and flight sensations. In Studies 4 & 5, we developed a new multisensory body scanning technology platform to induce and investigate one of the most common experiences in which the center of awareness is dissociated from the physical body: out-of-body experiences (OBEs). OBEs represent an interesting link between embodiment and vestibular sensations as they are characterized by embodiment of an elevated aerial position and perspective in space that is commonly associated with prominent sensations of floating, elevation, and flight. In this study, we have investigated how several sensorimotor and audio-visual stimulation conditions affect subjective sensations of disembodiment, floating, lightness as well as behavioral measures of self-location. In conclusion, my work developed new paradigms to investigate embodiment, BSC, and vestibular processing. My work revealed the influence of embodiment on vestibular sensations and applied these insights between embodiment and vestibular sensations to the field of field engineering by combining state-of-the-art technologies with knowledge of BSC with broad implications for robotics, neuroscience, of immersive VR, as well as experiential

EPFL2020

The role of optic flow pooling in insect flight control in cluttered environments

Emily Baird, Dario Floreano, Julien Jean Denis Nicolas Lecoeur

Flight through cluttered environments, such as forests, poses great challenges for animals and machines alike because even small changes in flight path may lead to collisions with nearby obstacles. When flying along narrow corridors, insects use the magnitude of visual motion experienced in each eye to control their position, height, and speed but it is unclear how this strategy would work when the environment contains nearby obstacles against a distant background. To minimise the risk of collisions, we would expect animals to rely on the visual motion generated by only the nearby obstacles but is this the case? To answer this, we combine behavioural experiments with numerical simulations and provide the first evidence that bumblebees extract the maximum rate of image motion in the frontal visual field to steer away from obstacles. Our findings also suggest that bumblebees use different optic flow calculations to control lateral position, speed, and height.

2019

Spatial Encoding of Translational Optic Flow in Planar Scenes by Elementary Motion Detector Arrays

Emily Baird, Dario Floreano, Julien Jean Denis Nicolas Lecoeur

Elementary Motion Detectors (EMD) are well-established models of visual motion estimation in insects. The response of EMDs are tuned to specific temporal and spatial frequencies of the input stimuli, which matches the behavioural response of insects to wide-field image rotation, called the optomotor response. However, other behaviours, such as speed and position control, cannot be fully accounted for by EMDs because these behaviours are largely unaffected by image properties and appear to be controlled by the ratio between the flight speed and the distance to an object, defined here as relative nearness. We present a method that resolves this inconsistency by extracting an unambiguous estimate of relative nearness from the output of an EMD array. Our method is suitable for estimation of relative nearness in planar scenes such as when flying above the ground or beside large flat objects. We demonstrate closed loop control of the lateral position and forward velocity of a simulated agent flying in a corridor. This finding may explain how insects can measure relative nearness and control their flight despite the frequency tuning of EMDs. Our method also provides engineers with a relative nearness estimation technique that benefits from the low computational cost of EMDs.

2018

Fixed-wing aircraft

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An aircraft (: aircraft) is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or, in a fe

Wing

A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoil

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