Hovering flight regulation of pigeon robots in laboratory and field

Compared to traditional bio-mimic robots, animal robots show superior locomotion, energy efficiency, and adaptability to complex environments but most remained in laboratory stage, needing further development for practical applications like exploration and inspection. Our pigeon robots validated in both laboratory and field, tested with an electrical stimulus unit (2-s duration, 0.5 ms pulse width, 80 Hz frequency). In a fixed stimulus procedure, hovering flight was conducted with 8 stimulus units applied every 2 s after flew over the trigger boundary. In a flexible procedure, stimulus was applied whenever they deviated from a virtual circle, with pulse width gains of 0.1 ms or 0.2 ms according to the trajectory angle. These optimized protocols achieved a success hovering rate of 87.5% and circle curvatures of 0.008 m-1-0.024 m-1, largely advancing the practical application of animal robots.