Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted considerable interest for a wide variety of applications, including meteorological observation, fire monitoring and patrolling, to military purposes such as reconnaissance, monitoring and communication [4]. In recent years, flying robots such as autonomous quadrocopters have gained increased interest in robotics and computer vision research. To navigate safely, these robots need the ability to localise themselves autonomously using their on-board sensors. Potential applications of such systems include automatic 3D reconstruction of buildings, inspection and simple maintenance tasks, surveillance of public places, as well as search and rescue missions.
Biologically inspired robotics is an area experiencing an increasing research and development. Based on nature success strategies, robotics researchers are interested in gaining an understanding of the sensory aspects that would be required to mimic nature's design with engineering solutions [2, 5]. A major challenge for miniaturised flying robots is the ability to navigate autonomously in complex indoor/outdoor environments. Biologically inspired vision is an interesting sensor modality because it can be lightweight and low-power [6]. According to [3], well-known biologically inspired visual-motor behaviours facilitate flight stabilisation, corridor-centring, flight odometry and the execution of smooth landings. Some of them have already been successfully implemented in robots [1].
During this year, the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, under the Topic of Vision Systems, especially welcomes papers that cover any aspect of biologically inspired vision in flying robots. As Topic-Editor in-Chief I feel that living beings have still much to tell us about the design and development of both indoor and outdoor flying robots. More concretely, regular papers as well as review articles will be admitted.