Study On Magnetic Control Method Of Outdoor Flight Of Pigeon

Biological robot is a kind of robots which can achieve controlling certain biological behaviors or movements artificially through inducing biological sensory information or innervation and taking advantages of the excellent biological motor function and power supply abilities.Pigeons have great potential in biological robot research because of their features of moving in three-dimensional space without being influenced by terrain factors,fast flight speed,good load capacity,easy propagation and homing ability etc.Previous studies of pigeon-based robots were conducted by stimulating the pigeon's brain directly,namely invasive stimulation,which was not only detrimental to the pigeon itself,but also had uncontrollable factors such as brain-computer interface during application,resulting in a low success rate.The researchers found that pigeon homing is mainly based on geomagnetic information.Their magnetic navigation capability has great potential for pigeon robot research.However,how geomagnetic information help pigeons navigate is still a mystery.Aiming at the outdoor magnetic control method of pigeon robot,the outdoor flight airborne device developed in this paper is 50.0mm × 30.0mm × 15.0mm and weighs only 19.6g.The device not only can collect and record geomagnetic information,attitude information(stable state)and GPS information in real time,but also can generate three-channel adjustable magnetic field stimulation according to preprogrammed discriminating conditions.In this paper,a series of experiments are carried out to verify the functional reliability of the device.Finally,the preliminary experiments on pigeon magnetic navigation are carried out using the developed device,including the pigeon outdoor flight magnetic field acquisition experiment and the uniaxial magnetic field stimulation in sunny and cloudy conditions experiment.The device and outdoor experiments conducted in the paper not only provide the basis for the study of the magnetic navigation mechanism and the future magnetic field-based pigeon robot,but also offer a powerful tool to the study of the magnetic control of the pigeons' outdoor flight.