"The rate of 4 Hz appeared to be a good balance between computational usage and thermalling performance."

Wow, does this apply to human pilots too? If so then you have to make a decision of to turn or not and which way to turn in less than one second or you might be missing lift. Somehow this does not sound right, especially because this small scale glider is flying slower than a sailplane.

This is rather interesting from a controls and handling qualities standpoint, given that the quickest most pilots are capable of responding to an aircraft is between 4 and 5 Hz... who would have thought we were optimized for anything related to flight!