The role of optic flow pooling in insect flight control in cluttered environments
(2019) In Scientific Reports 9(1).- Abstract
Flight through cluttered environments, such as forests, poses great challenges for animals and machines alike because even small changes in flight path may lead to collisions with nearby obstacles. When flying along narrow corridors, insects use the magnitude of visual motion experienced in each eye to control their position, height, and speed but it is unclear how this strategy would work when the environment contains nearby obstacles against a distant background. To minimise the risk of collisions, we would expect animals to rely on the visual motion generated by only the nearby obstacles but is this the case? To answer this, we combine behavioural experiments with numerical simulations and provide the first evidence that bumblebees... (More)
Flight through cluttered environments, such as forests, poses great challenges for animals and machines alike because even small changes in flight path may lead to collisions with nearby obstacles. When flying along narrow corridors, insects use the magnitude of visual motion experienced in each eye to control their position, height, and speed but it is unclear how this strategy would work when the environment contains nearby obstacles against a distant background. To minimise the risk of collisions, we would expect animals to rely on the visual motion generated by only the nearby obstacles but is this the case? To answer this, we combine behavioural experiments with numerical simulations and provide the first evidence that bumblebees extract the maximum rate of image motion in the frontal visual field to steer away from obstacles. Our findings also suggest that bumblebees use different optic flow calculations to control lateral position, speed, and height.
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- author
- Lecoeur, Julien LU ; Dacke, Marie LU ; Floreano, Dario and Baird, Emily LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2019-05-22
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Scientific Reports
- volume
- 9
- issue
- 1
- article number
- 7707
- publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85066152252
- pmid:31118454
- ISSN
- 2045-2322
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-019-44187-2
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 726332df-99bf-450c-95cb-6c58ca72a819
- date added to LUP
- 2019-06-11 08:24:06
- date last changed
- 2024-05-14 12:33:09
@article{726332df-99bf-450c-95cb-6c58ca72a819,
abstract = {{<p>Flight through cluttered environments, such as forests, poses great challenges for animals and machines alike because even small changes in flight path may lead to collisions with nearby obstacles. When flying along narrow corridors, insects use the magnitude of visual motion experienced in each eye to control their position, height, and speed but it is unclear how this strategy would work when the environment contains nearby obstacles against a distant background. To minimise the risk of collisions, we would expect animals to rely on the visual motion generated by only the nearby obstacles but is this the case? To answer this, we combine behavioural experiments with numerical simulations and provide the first evidence that bumblebees extract the maximum rate of image motion in the frontal visual field to steer away from obstacles. Our findings also suggest that bumblebees use different optic flow calculations to control lateral position, speed, and height.</p>}},
author = {{Lecoeur, Julien and Dacke, Marie and Floreano, Dario and Baird, Emily}},
issn = {{2045-2322}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{05}},
number = {{1}},
publisher = {{Nature Publishing Group}},
series = {{Scientific Reports}},
title = {{The role of optic flow pooling in insect flight control in cluttered environments}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44187-2}},
doi = {{10.1038/s41598-019-44187-2}},
volume = {{9}},
year = {{2019}},
}