2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS)

Athens, Greece. June 15-18, 2021

Neural networks algorithms for ornithopter trajectory optimization*

M.A. Pérez-Cutiño1 and F. Rodrı́guez2 and L.D. Pascual2 and J.M. Dı́az-Báñez2

Abstract— Trajectory optimization has recently been ad-

dressed to compute energy-efficient routes for ornithopter
navigation, but its online application remains a challenge. To
overcome the high computation time of traditional approaches,
this paper proposes algorithms that recursively generate tra-
jectories based on the output of neural networks. To this end,
we create a novel data set composed by energy-efficient trajec-
2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) | 978-1-6654-1535-4/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICUAS51884.2021.9476838

tories obtained by running a competitive planner. We present

two methods to compute low-cost trajectories: a classification
approach to learn maneuvers and an alternative regression 0 OSPA trajectory
method that predicts new states. Both approaches are tested in −5
Flight path
Flight states
several scenarios, including the landing case. The effectiveness
−10
and efficiency of the proposed algorithms are demonstrated
−15
through simulation, which show that neural networks can be

z(m)
used to compute the flight path of the ornithopter in real time. −20

Index Terms— Trajectory optimization, ornithopter, dataset, −25

neural networks. −30

−35
I. I NTRODUCTION A ND R ELATED W ORK −40

An ornithopter is a flapping wing drone [1] and it is 0 20 40 60 80 100

x(m)
normally designed to imitate the flight of a bird, a bat or
an insect. These prototypes seek to overcome the battery Fig. 1: Top view, the ornithopter prototype used in [9].
limitation and the human-safety problems of the multi-rotor Bottom view, trajectory computed by OSPA, with three
drones. Over the past few decades, there have been remark- maneuvers for 100 meters before landing.
able advances in the design of flapping wing vehicles [2],
[3]. However, autonomous flight is still a challenging task.
Planning optimal trajectories for autonomous ornithopters is
trajectory is closely related to the number of maneuvers
a complicated problem. First, these types of vehicles present
that the object can perform at each point of the trajectory
nonlinear and complex dynamics which must be taken into
(i.e. the number of paths that can be generated). A survey
account when computing feasible trajectories. Second, the
about the optimization problem for multirotor and fixed-
state space is large as it must include the position, velocities
wing kind of vehicles can be found in [5]. In robotics,
and altitude of the drone, which are relevant for gliding
solving the trajectory optimization problem online remains
and perching operations. Due to these complexities, there
a challenge. Thus, neural networks (NN)-based trajectory
is a need for efficient model-based methods that allow
optimization algorithms have been proposed [6], [7]. See [8]
us to compute pseudo-optimal trajectories with real-time
for a recent survey on computational-intelligence-based UAV
performance.
path planning.
The path planning problem for ornithopters falls into the
In contrast to the approaches described so far, we are
trajectory optimization area. Trajectory optimization algo-
interested in neural network-based algorithms that learn to
rithms aim to find the best trajectory for an object in a
fly a particular ornithopter, see Figure 1. Due to the lack of
space when a set of kinematics and dynamics rules are
data from real bird flights, our idea is to generate artificial
considered [4]. An optimal trajectory is the one that min-
bio-inspired flight data sets consisting of pseudo-optimal
imizes (or maximizes) a given cost function and satisfies
trajectories computed by a competitive planner.
a set of constraints usually described in a mathematical
differential model. The complexity of computing an optimal A recent approach for the problem of optimizing or-
nithopters trajectories is [9]. The authors propose the planner
*This work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy OSPA (which stands for Ornithopter Segmentation-based
and Competitiveness (MTM2016-76272-R AEI/FEDER,UE) and European Planning Approach), a trajectory optimization algorithm for
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie
Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement #734922. a real ornithopter prototype illustrated in Figure 1. This
1 M.A. P.-C. is with the GRVC Robotics Lab, University of Seville,
paradigm can be applied to any dynamic model and different
mpcutino@us.es flight types. The authors demonstrated that OSPA outper-
2 F.R., L.D. P. and J.M.D.-B. are with the Depart. of Applied Math-
ematics II, University of Seville, SPAIN. frodriguex@us.es, forms alternative probabilistic kinodynamic planners both in
d.pascualcallejo@gmail.com, dbanez@us.es cost (total energy) and accuracy (distance to the target). They

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 considered a non-linear model for describing the ornithopter is a tuple of values m = (δ, f ), where δ is the tail deflection,
behaviour during flapping and gliding maneuvers. Unfortu- determined by the deflection angle (up and down), and f
nately, OSPA is only valid for online application in short is the wing flapping, determined by the flapping frequency
distances scenarios. Furthermore, in these scenarios OSPA (including zero value for gliding). Thus an optimal trajectory
only minimizes the positional distance, without taking into can be done by combining flapping and gliding actions (see
account the ornithopter velocity and pitch values at the target [9] for more details).
configuration. We assume an open space where the drone flies without
Here, we present a new approach to online plan effi- obstacles and we consider two scenarios: the mid-range
cient trajectories for an ornithopter both for long and short problem, where the X-distance between starting and target
distances scenarios. The method uses neural networks and points is within a range of 25 to 100 meters, and the landing
significantly improves the computational time and energy problem, where the X-distance is within a range of 15 to 25
consumption of the more recent trajectory optimization ap- meters.
proach. To train the networks, we build a data set of energy- The optimization function is the total energy cost (battery)
optimized trajectories based on the OSPA algorithm. We consumed by the ornithopter. Two main metrics will be used
design two types of neural networks that can learn an optimal in the experiments: the cost and the precision. The cost is
policy from the data set and predict the sequence of states given by the energy consumption determined by maneuvers
of an energy-efficient trajectory to reach the target. performed by the ornithopter it is dominated by the flapping
In summary, our main contributions are the following: maneuvers. The precision measures how far the final state is
• We create a novel data set for trajectory optimization from the target in the XZ-plane.
based on the planner OSPA. There are some approaches to address this optimization
• We design an algorithm using an artificial neural net- problem but unfortunately, solving the non-linear system that
work (ANN) to learn maneuvers and predict energy- describes the dynamics of the ornithopter is time consuming
optimized trajectories that can be computed online. and the methods from the literature are no valid to be
• We use an alternative recurrent neural network (RNN) used online. Thus, the main goal in this paper is to use a
to learn states instead of maneuvers and predict the next neural network to compute (in real time) an energy-efficient
state for accurate trajectories. trajectory for the ornithopter.
• We show that our neural network-based optimization For modelling the longitudinal motion of the ornithopter
algorithms can be used for real-time trajectory optimiza- prototype, the following non-dimensional Newton–Euler
tion both for medium and short distances. Indeed, our equations is used in [9]:
methods significantly reduce computational costs while
resulting in trajectories comparable to those produced du
2M = Ub2 [(CL + ΛCLt ) sin α
by OSPA. dt
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: the + (CT − CD − Li − ΛCDt ) cos α]
problem description is stated in Section II. Afterwards, the − sin θ − 2Mqw (1)
created data set is introduced in Section III. The NN-based dw
algorithms are presented in Section IV, while computational 2M = Ub2 [−(CL + ΛCLt ) cos α
dt
analysis and results take place in Section V. Finally, conclu- + (CT − CD − Li − ΛCDt ) sin α]
sions are outlined in Section VI.
+ cos θ + 2Mqu (2)
II. P ROBLEM D ESCRIPTION 1 dq
= CL cos(α) − (CT − CD ) sin(α)
Suppose that we have an autonomous ornithopter with χUb2 dt
a known model of its dynamics. The problem is to plan + LΛ[CLt cos(α) + CDt sin(α)]
online efficient trajectories to navigate the ornithopter from
− RHL [CL sin(α) + (CT − CD ) cos(α)] (3)
a starting point to a target location. Those trajectories have
to comply with the ornithopter dynamics, being thus flyable. dθ
= q, (4)
Then, we assume the existence of lower-level algorithms to dt
control the ornithopter through the computed trajectory. where α is√the angle of attack, defined as α = arctan(w/u),
A trajectory is a sequence of flight states, where a state and Ub = u2 + w2 the velocity module. M, χ, Λ, L and
describes the ornithopter configuration at a given instant of RHL are characteristic non-dimensional parameters of the
time. A flight state is given by a tuple s = (x, z, u, w, Θ, q), UAV. These parameters are obtained by scaling the variables
where x and z are the positional values, u and w are velocity with the characteristic speed, length and time:
components in the body reference frame, Θ is the pitch
angle and q is the pitch angular velocity. Our trajectories r s
2mg c ρSc2
are constrained to the XZ plane, as we use a longitudinal Uc = , Lc = , tc = , (5)
ρS 2 8mg
motion model for the ornithopter.
The ornithopter reaches a state (dynamically feasible) where m is the mass of the UAV, ρ the air density, S the wing
performing a specific control maneuver. A control maneuver surface, c the mean aerodynamic chord and g the gravity

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Fig. 2: Schematics of the ornithopter with the forces acting
on it. Axis XZ represents the Earth frame; axis X 0 Z 0 a
translation of the Earth frame; and axis Xb Zb the body frame.
acceleration.
Figure 2 shows the forces acting on the vehicle, as well
as the representative variables and reference frames used. In
[9], the authors explain how to compute the coefficients for
the aerodynamic forces of the wing and the tail.
III. DATA S ET
As far as we know there are no data sets available for
ornithopter trajectory optimization. Thus, we created a novel
data set to train the NNs using the OSPA planner. For the
scenarios described before (gliding and landing problems),
we generate a data set of pairs (s, m) where s is a flight
state and m is the corresponding control maneuver.
In the mid-range problem we aim to obtain low energy
trajectories within a precision bounded by 3 meters. For this
problem we generate over 400 different trajectories (3053
states) between two random initial and target states sampled
within intervals in Table I. From each trajectory, we store
the state-control waypoints returned by OSPA and we use
the 80% to train the models and the rest for validation.
For the landing problem the ornithopter needs accurate
trajectories, thus precision is more important than energy.
We select trajectories within a precision bounded by 0.25
meters. Also, in order to be ready for a perching maneuver,
the final state must have speed and pitch values near to 0 m/s
and 30◦ , respectively. We generate over 600 different landing
trajectories (11024 states) with initial and target randomly
sampled within the intervals in Table I. From this data we
use the 80% to train the models and the rest for validation.
We release the generated data set1 for further study and
reproducibility.
Variable Initial State Target State (MR) Target State (L)
X (m) 0 [25, 100] [15, 25]
Z (m) 0 [−40, 0] [−10, 0]
Θ (◦ ) [−30, 30] 30 30
Ub (m/s) [1, 4] 0 0
TABLE I: Ranges of initial and target state variables used in
the experiments. MR: mid-range, L: landing.
1 https://github.com/ml-planning-ornithopter/ospa_
dataset
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IV. N ETWORKS
The OSPA planner performance depends on the maneuvers
it takes at a given state. We propose two types of networks
to evaluate performance against OSPA: a network to predict
actions and a network to predict states. This derives in
two different kind of problems, classification and regression,
respectively.
The advantage of the maneuver classification network
is that it can generate feasible paths for the ornithopter
according to predefined dynamic model and, it is possible
to compute the cost in terms of energy. However, this
network only consider a discrete set of available maneuvers.
Therefore, we propose a second type of network to directly
predict a set of future states given the past states in the flight.
Thus, we tackle the continuous problem, even if the training
data is generated in a discrete manner.
A. Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
The data set is used to train a deep neural network in a
supervised manner. We model a trajectory from the data as
a discrete set of state-maneuvers pairs. Since the number of
maneuvers is fixed, we train the network to learn the next
control maneuver depending on the current and target states.
Before training, a pre-processing of the data set is per-
formed to remove non-representative data. We observed that
some of the control maneuvers are used in less than the 2%
of the trajectories in the whole data set, thus the trajectories
which contains these maneuvers are deleted, keeping 99% of
the data intact and 7 maneuvers in total.
1) ANN architecture: The goal is to build an ANN to learn
the best maneuver in each scenario. For this, we label the
maneuvers with a tag from L = {0, 1, . . . 6}. The input of
the network is the difference between the current and target
states, and the output is the maneuver to be performed.
We build an ANN with only two hidden layers in order to
obtain fast computational inference. We consider a six units
input layer and a seven units output layer. The first hidden
layer quadruple the size of its input, and the second hidden
layer doubles it. Moreover, each of this layer contains a
ReLU activation and a Dropout layer as a regularization tech-
nique. All the input variables are normalized by subtracting
the mean and dividing by the standard deviation. Attempts
with other architectures did not improve remarkably the
results.
2) Training: The network is trained with the Adam op-
timizer using a learning rate of 0.001, a β1 value of 0.9, a
β2 value of 0.999, an epsilon value of 1e-8 and no weight
decay. The learning is stopped after 300 epochs. The loss
function that minimizes the learning process is a weighted
cross entropy function defined by:
X
LCE = ε(N (s), y(s)) p(y(s), m) log q(N (s), m),
m∈L
where ε(·, ·) is a distance measure between the output of the
network N (s) and the expected output y(s) for an input s.
p(·, ·) represents the probability of input s of being of class
 Loss per epoch
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3: (a) and (b) show the behaviour of LCE and LM SE
loss functions during training phase for ANN and RNN,
respectively. In both cases the loss value has converged for
the testing data set.
m and q represents the probability of input s of being of
class m following the ANN output distribution. We use a
softmax function to obtain this probabilities.
The distance measure ε is defined by the distance matrix
between labels (maneuvers), M7X7 :
ε(N (s), y(s)) = M [argmax(N (s)), argmax(y(s))]
Each cell (i, j) in M represents the Euclidean distance
between action i and action j. The lower the value of a
cell, the more similar the maneuvers are. The use of this
measure as a weight value for the loss function leads to a
fast performance in the training phase. Also, this technique
improves the generalization of the network. Figure 3a shows
the loss value during training. The validation loss decreases
with the training loss, which implies that the networks is
learning properly and that there are no overfitting effects.
3) Path generation: Once trained, the ANN can predict
the control maneuver m from a flight state s. Also, we im-
plement the kinodynamic model introduced in [9], K(s, m),
to compute the next state given an initial state and a control
maneuver. This allows us to compute the full trajectory by
using the next formula in a loop starting at the initial state:
si+1 = K(si , N (si )).
The loop is stopped when the next state if further than the
current one from the target.
B. Recurrent Neural Network (RNN)
The goal of the proposed ANN is to predict the next
maneuver at each time step using the information of the
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current state. For the sake of comparison, we propose a RNN
to calculate the ornithopter trajectory based on a sequence
of flight states.
1) RNN architecture: We build a RNN with one recurrent
layer and one output layer. The output layer has as many
units as flight states are considered for prediction (two states
for the mid-range problem and six states for the landing
problem). The input is the set of differences between each
element in the sequence of past states and the target state. All
input variables are normalized following the same strategy as
in the ANN scenario. The output is the distance of the next
state to the target, and has a linear activation function. This
represents a nice strategy to push the network to predict low
values while keeping the ability to compute the next state,
which can be obtained by simply subtracting the output of
the network and the target state. The recurrent layer has 11
LSTM neurons. We have chosen LSTM neurons to deal with
the vanishing gradient problem encountered by traditional
recurrent neurons. We choose to keep a small architecture to
obtain fast predictions rate.
2) Training: The network is trained with one trajectory at
a time, by comparing its output with the expected values. The
optimization process is carried out by the Adam optimizer
using the same parameters as the ANN. The learning is
stopped after 100 epochs. The loss function used is the MSE
(Mean Squared Error):
N
1 X 2
LM SE = (d(yi , yˆi )) ,
N i=1
where N is the number of considered flight states, yi is the
i component of the OSPA state and yˆi is the i-component of
the RNN predicted state. In our specific case, minimizing the
MSE implies that the likelihood function between the pre-
dicted states distribution and the OSPA states is maximized.
Figure 3b shows the loss value during training.
3) Path computation: The RNN algorithm in the predic-
tion mode uses an initial input and develops a complete
trajectory sequence starting from it. The inputs for our
trajectory computation are just the start and target states of
the desired trajectory. These states are used to compute the
initial normalized distance to the target (x0 ) which is used to
start the RNN prediction algorithm. At every time step t the
information to predict the next state consists on the previous
prediction of the distance at t − 1 (yt−1 ) and the recurrent
layer hidden states at t − 1 (ht−1 ). The algorithm ends when
an output yt is close enough to zero, i.e. the target has been
reached and the trajectory is over.
V. R ESULTS
A. Mid-range problem
In this section we compare the three methods, the NN-
based algorithms and the OSPA planner. We use the whole
data set, including training and validation samples, to com-
pute the performance metrics (this is not an advantage for the
NNs). Both networks iteratively compute a trajectory from
the initial state to the target. This means that the networks
 Algorithm Cost (W) Time (s) Precision (m) Error
OSPA 34.68 520 2.84 na
ANN 35.39 0.49 2.99 1.57
RNN na 0.40 0.37 1.31

TABLE II: Comparison results (average) for the mid-range

problem. na is the acronym used for not applicable values.

have to be reactive to wrong predictions, since a single wrong

prediction leads to a totally new trajectory.
The metrics used to compare the algorithms are the
average values of energy consumption (Cost), execution time
(Time), the Euclidean distance between the last state and
the target (Precision) and the mean distance between NNs
and OSPA trajectories (Error). The precision is calculated by
using the x and z values of the states. The Error is defined
as the average vertical distance between a fixed number of
points in trajectories generated by OSPA and the networks.
The points are obtained by sampling 10 equally spaced x-
values for each trajectory and computing the correspondent
z-value. This metric gives us an idea about the similarity
between two given trajectories.
Table II displays a comparison between OSPA, ANN
and RNN for the aforementioned metrics. Note that RNN
does not compute maneuvers, therefore the trajectory Cost
cannot be calculated. However, we assume that a predicted
trajectory with a small value of Error has a similar cost to the
OSPA solution. The experiments show the networks ability
of drastically outperform the OSPA algorithm in execution
time. Moreover, the ANN results in terms of energy con-
sumption (Cost) and Precision are similar to OSPA. It may
be surprising that the Precision value for RNN is even better
than for OSPA. This is due to the policy learned by the
network, which push the final distance values close to zero.
At this point, it is important to remark the concept behind
each network: the ANN predicts maneuvers, which are used
to generate feasible states according to the dynamic model
of the ornithopter; the RNN is used to compute new general
states, not necessarily flyable. Finally, the Error values from
the table show that, in average, the predicted trajectories are
about 1.5 meters in the Z range from the OSPA reference.
Figure 4 shows good examples of the network path
generation in terms of x and z components. In general,
neural network paths smooth discontinuities respect to the
OSPA paths and sometimes improve the precision measure.
Figure 4a shows a high value of similarity between the
paths generated by the NNs and OSPA. Note that Figure 4b
highlights the ANN capabilities of generalization in terms of
path re-planning when it makes a wrong prediction.
We found some situations where the ANN does not
perform as well as expected. Figure 5 illustrates examples
of bad convergence. After a wrong prediction, the trajectory
goes down. However, the RNN behaves well and tends to
get near the target. We believe that the main reason for this
is the target elevation in z compared to its position in x. To
support this intuition, we carried out a study depending on
the ratio | z/x |.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 4: Trajectories for OSPA, ANN and RNN in the XZ-
plane for the mid-range problem. RNN model describes a
trajectory slightly more similar to the OSPA reference.
Table III shows different values for the metrics according
to the positional ratio. Each metric is obtained from trajecto-
ries that lies on a spatial rectangle defined by the ratio. The
higher the ratio, the more similar are the absolute values of
z and x. This study helps the user to make the decision on
which network to use depending on the scenario. For a ratio
greater than 0.6, ANN shows the stronger performance in
terms of cost and error. However, RNN has better precision
values.
For the ratio that lies between [0.6, 0.8], RNN performance
is boosted, improving all of the metric values obtained in
table II. A similar behavior appears for ANN in the interval
[0, 0.2].
B. Landing problem
Landing requires complex maneuvers in order to prepare
the ornithopter to perform a perching operation. Moreover,
there is a need for a fast computation because the ornithopter
has limited time for reaction. Also, for the landing problem
it is more relevant to end the trajectory closer to the target
rather than reducing the energy cost.
For this new scenario, we apply the same methodology as
for the mid-range problem, in terms of data generation, data
preprocessing, network arquitecture and path generation. In
the case of the RNN, six states are considered to train and
predict instead of only two as in the mid-range problem. In
the case of ANN there are small changes. We use a decay
parameter with value 1e-06 for updating the weights in the
training phase, and the total number of epochs was reduced to
160. Also, the maneuvers reduction strategy leaves 9 classes

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 | z/x | Cost(ANN | RNN) Time(ANN | RNN) Precision(ANN | RNN) Error(ANN | RNN)
[0.8, 1] 21.61 | na 0.45 | 0.40 1.57 | 0.18 0.91 | 1.90
[0.6, 0.8] 24.48 | na 0.42 | 0.38 1.85 | 0.12 0.46 | 1.08
[0.4, 0.6] 28.80 | na 0.50 | 0.43 3.06 | 0.29 1.73 | 1.32
[0.2, 0.4] 31.96 | na 0.52 | 0.46 3.96 | 0.42 1.69 | 1.22
[0, 0.2] 52.26 | na 0.95 | 0.81 1.89 | 0.47 1.55 | 1.41

TABLE III: Results depending on the rectangle ratio.

x(m) vs z(m) Algorithm Cost Time Precision Error V-error P-error

OSPA 27.46 37.24 0.07 na 2.45 0.43
ANN 27.71 1.02 0.17 0.63 2.44 0.37
RNN na 0.87 0.45 1.17 4.60 0.33

TABLE IV: Results for the landing problem.

maneuver at a given state and, a RNN-based method which

(a)
(b)
Fig. 5: Examples of bad performance of the ANN (a) and
RNN (b) in the mid-range distance.
representing more than 85% of the original data. Moreover,
we construct a validation data set with a total of 191 paths
that contains 3131 states. Table IV shows the performance of
the networks compared to OSPA. We added to new metrics,
(V-error) and (P-error), measuring the error in the last state
in terms of speed (m/s) and pitch (rad), respectively. Since
the landing path must end just before perching, the goal now
is to predict trajectories very close to the target with suitable
velocity and pitch angle, for instance, 0 and 30◦ , respectively.
As in the previous case study, the experiments highlight
the NNs capabilities to significantly improves computational
time without a meaningful loss in the other metrics. It is
worth noting that although the velocity error is not negligible,
this result is similar to the one obtained by the OSPA
algorithm. Thus, it is expected that with more refined data
the networks can improve this value.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
A proper performance of the use of neural network-based
algorithms for ornithopter trajectory optimization have been
demonstrated in this paper. Two iterative methods were
developed: an ANN-based algorithm which learns the best
predicts the next state to be reached. ANN follows the
classification strategy while (RNN) represents the regression
approach. The results shown that neural network approxi-
mations generally matches the optimization performance of
the OSPA planner and in addition, they can be used to plan
efficient trajectories online.
A novel data set was created to train the networks. The
set of energy-efficient trajectories was obtained according to
the OSPA planner for medium and short-distance scenarios.
Although we obtained good results with the data sets
created, it can be increased in order to check if there
really exists a glass ceiling in the use of neural networks.
Other potential problems to investigate include using other
machine learning techniques, such as reinforcement learning,
as well as performing experiments with a real ornithopter by
combining our planners with nonlinear controllers for flight
stabilization and trajectory tracking.
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