The effect of optic flow cues on honeybee flight control in wind
The effect of optic flow cues on honeybee flight control in wind
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DOI：
10.1098/rspb.2020.3051
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发表时间：
2021-01-27
影响因子：
4.7
通讯作者：
Srinivasan, Mandyam V.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Baird, Emily;Boeddeker, Norbert;Srinivasan, Mandyam V.
为了尽量减少与地面或其他障碍物碰撞的风险，飞行动物需要控制它们的地面速度和地面高度。这项任务在风中特别具有挑战性，其中逆风需要动物增加其空速以保持恒定的地面速度，并且顺风可能产生负空速，使得飞行更难以控制。在这项研究中，我们调查了头和尾风如何影响蜜蜂的飞行控制，这是众所周知的依赖于整个眼睛产生的视觉运动的模式，被称为光流，以保持恒定的地面速度和高度。我们发现，当同时提供纵向和横向光流线索（在或垂直于飞行方向，分别），蜜蜂保持恒定的地面速度，但飞低的逆风和更高的顺风，响应时，也观察到纵向光流线索最小化。当光流的横向分量被最小化，或当所有光流线索被最小化时，风对地面高度的影响被消除。我们建议，定期侧向振荡的蜜蜂，因为他们飞可以用来提取信息的距离到地面，独立的纵向光流，他们用于地面速度控制。这种计算简单的策略可能在开发用于在自然环境中引导自主飞行器的轻量化和鲁棒性系统方面具有潜在的用途。
To minimize the risk of colliding with the ground or other obstacles, flying animals need to control both their ground speed and ground height. This task is particularly challenging in wind, where head winds require an animal to increase its airspeed to maintain a constant ground speed and tail winds may generate negative airspeeds, rendering flight more difficult to control. In this study, we investigate how head and tail winds affect flight control in the honeybee Apis mellifera, which is known to rely on the pattern of visual motion generated across the eye-known as optic flow-to maintain constant ground speeds and heights. We find that, when provided with both longitudinal and transverse optic flow cues (in or perpendicular to the direction of flight, respectively), honeybees maintain a constant ground speed but fly lower in head winds and higher in tail winds, a response that is also observed when longitudinal optic flow cues are minimized. When the transverse component of optic flow is minimized, or when all optic flow cues are minimized, the effect of wind on ground height is abolished. We propose that the regular sidewards oscillations that the bees make as they fly may be used to extract information about the distance to the ground, independently of the longitudinal optic flow that they use for ground speed control. This computationally simple strategy could have potential uses in the development of lightweight and robust systems for guiding autonomous flying vehicles in natural environments.