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There is evidence that flying animals such as pigeons, goshawks, and bats use optical flow sensing to enable high-speed flight through forest clutter. This paper discusses the elements of a theory of controlled flight through obstacle fields in which motion control laws are based on optical flow sensing.Performance comparison is made with feedback laws that use distance and bearing measurements, and practical challenges of implementation on an actual robotic air vehicle are described. The related question of fundamental performance limits due to clutter density is addressed.

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The authors apply the Adaptive High-Gain Extended Kalman Filter (AEKF) to the problem of estimating engine efficiency with data gathered from normal driving. The AEKF is an extension of the traditional Kalman Filter that allows the filter to be reactive to perturbations without sacrificing noise filtering. An observability normal form of the engine efficiency model is developed for the AEKF. The continuous-discrete AEKF is presented along with strategies for dealing with asynchronous data. Empiric test results are presented and contrasted with EKF-derived results.