Sensorimotor control of bird flight

Birds have impressive flight capabilities that could be an important source of inspiration for new aerial vehicles. Their impressive flight capabilities are, in particular, an excellent manoeuvrability, a high adaptability to environment changes and a good capacity of minimisation of energy costs in flight which gives them a very good endurance. The main objective of this master thesis is to design a controller that stabilises the flight of a bird model by stopping stall onset when stall is detected by the sensory receptors. First, we identify the relevant sensory receptors to detect stall onset. Then, the design of the controller is presented: the condition for which the bird is subjected to stall is defined, the flight parameters that need to be changed for the bird to stop stalling are identified and the type of controller is defined. Next, an interval for the integral gain is selected based on the results. Finally, the limits of the study and the future perspectives are discussed.