How do ants use encode & identify natural panoramic scenes?

蚂蚁如何使用encode

• 批准号: BB/H013644/1
• 负责人: Paul Graham
• 金额: $ 62.91万
• 依托单位: University of Sussex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2010 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FH013644%2F1
• 关键词: How; do; ants; use; encode

Panoramic scenes are important to many navigating animals in providing directional signals (home is left of the hill), compass direction (valley runs north-south), and a rough sense of place (we are nearly home). But how large natural scenes are encoded or recognised is almost unknown. We will explore this topic in ants for its intrinsic interest, as a new approach to studying insect pattern vision, and more broadly because the way that a low resolution and relatively simple visual system deals with natural scenes relates to current areas of neuroscience, computer vision and robotics. Walking ants are good insects for such a study as their scanning and viewing movements while recognising scenes and approaching patterns can be monitored at high resolution to give both the orientation of an ant's body axis and its position, allowing us to infer how a scene is imaged on the retina. The design of experiments can be kept simple following our finding that the directional responses of desert ants to a real panorama can be elicited by a crude facsimile of the skyline of that panorama. It hints at possible features that ants use for scene identification, such as peaks and troughs in the skyline. Also, as distance and compass information are not essential for scene recognition, it is realistic to study aspects of it in the lab. Additionally, the old but long-ignored result that naïve ants exposed to a large visual stimulus tend to face its centre of mass gives us a new way to analyse how ants integrate information across a large scene. Our major research questions are: How do ants scan and view patterns during recognition? Ants and bees simplify the computational problems of pattern recognition by adopting stereotyped viewing strategies. We will analyse these strategies while ants inspect, recognise and use panoramic visual scenes of different sizes. Pilot data show that desert ants in the field rotate to scan a scene before correcting their course, or if the scene is unfamiliar. Videos of this scanning will reveal the relationship between viewing direction and guiding elements in the panorama. In the lab, the fixity or variability of viewing behaviour during scene recognition and the changes induced by scene transformations will be examined for clues to the coordinate system of scene encoding (retinotopic, compass-based, or intrinsic to the scene). How do ants integrate information over a large area? As a new approach to analyzing the visual processing that occurs across large scenes, we will study the ants' computation of the centre of mass of a stimulus. Because this aiming behaviour needs no training, we can test a large variety of stimuli and analyse how different areas and features of a scene combine in the estimate of a scene's centre of mass. Our aim is to produce a model of this processing that can predict an ant's directional response to most scenes. How are components of panoramic scenes encoded? That a panorama can be recognised through its simulated skyline means that a significant part of the scene is captured by the skyline contour. One likely form of skyline encoding is as a sequence of oriented edges. Another possibility is that the shape of scene components - peaks or troughs - is encoded by the separation between skyline inflections and the centre of mass of a component. By training ants to distinguish between shapes (initially isosceles and scalene triangles), we will investigate whether ants use these or other visual 'primitives'. How do ants use panoramic scenes? We will examine in the field the ways that information from natural panoramas (1) provides directional information for guidance, (2) acts as a contextual cue for priming the appropriate spatial memories for ants that are trained to two foraging routes, and (3) interacts with compass information in scene recognition.

全景场景对于许多导航动物来说非常重要，因为它可以提供方向信号（家在山的左边）、指南针方向（山谷走向南北）和粗略的位置感（我们快到家了）。但对多大的自然场景进行编码或识别几乎是未知的。我们将在蚂蚁中探索这个主题，因为它的内在兴趣，作为研究昆虫模式视觉的新方法，更广泛地说，因为低分辨率和相对简单的视觉系统处理自然场景的方式涉及当前的神经科学、计算机视觉和机器人领域。行走的蚂蚁是此类研究的好昆虫，因为它们在识别场景和接近模式时进行扫描和观察运动，可以以高分辨率进行监测，从而给出蚂蚁身体轴的方向及其位置，使我们能够推断场景如何在视网膜上成像。我们发现沙漠蚂蚁对真实全景图的方向反应可以通过该全景图天际线的粗略复制来引起，因此实验设计可以保持简单。它暗示了蚂蚁用于场景识别的可能特征，例如天际线上的峰和谷。此外，由于距离和指南针信息对于场景识别来说并不是必需的，因此在实验室中研究它的各个方面是现实的。此外，一个古老但长期被忽视的结果是，幼稚的蚂蚁暴露在巨大的视觉刺激下往往会面对其质心，这为我们提供了一种新的方法来分析蚂蚁如何在大场景中整合信息。我们的主要研究问题是：蚂蚁在识别过程中如何扫描和查看模式？蚂蚁和蜜蜂通过采用刻板的观察策略简化了模式识别的计算问题。我们将在蚂蚁检查、识别和使用不同大小的全景视觉场景的同时分析这些策略。试点数据显示，野外的沙漠蚂蚁会在纠正路线之前或在场景不熟悉的情况下旋转扫描场景。这种扫描的视频将揭示全景图中观看方向和引导元素之间的关系。在实验室中，将检查场景识别期间观看行为的固定性或可变性以及场景变换引起的变化，以寻找场景编码坐标系（视网膜主题、基于指南针或场景固有的）的线索。蚂蚁如何整合大范围的信息？作为分析大场景中发生的视觉处理的新方法，我们将研究蚂蚁对刺激质心的计算。因为这种瞄准行为不需要训练，所以我们可以测试各种各样的刺激，并分析场景的不同区域和特征如何组合来估计场景的质心。我们的目标是建立一个这种处理的模型，可以预测蚂蚁对大多数场景的定向反应。全景场景的组成部分是如何编码的？全景图可以通过其模拟的天际线来识别，这意味着场景的很大一部分是由天际线轮廓捕获的。天际线编码的一种可能形式是一系列定向边缘。另一种可能性是场景组件的形状（峰或谷）是通过天际线拐点和组件质心之间的分离来编码的。通过训练蚂蚁区分形状（最初是等腰三角形和不等边三角形），我们将研究蚂蚁是否使用这些或其他视觉“基元”。蚂蚁如何使用全景场景？我们将在现场研究自然全景信息的方式（1）提供指导方向信息，（2）作为上下文线索，为被训练到两条觅食路线的蚂蚁启动适当的空间记忆，以及（3）在场景识别中与指南针信息交互。

项目成果

How might ants use panoramic views for route navigation?

• DOI: 10.1242/jeb.046755
• 发表时间: 2011-02-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
• 影响因子: 2.8
• 作者: Philippides, Andrew;Baddeley, Bart;Graham, Paul
• 通讯作者: Graham, Paul

Phase-dependent visual control of the zigzag paths of navigating wood ants.

对导航木蚁之字形路径的相位依赖视觉控制。

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.10.014
• 发表时间: 2013
• 期刊: CB
• 作者: Lent DD

A model of ant route navigation driven by scene familiarity.

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002336
• 发表时间: 2012-01
• 期刊: PLoS computational biology
• 影响因子: 4.3
• 作者: Baddeley B;Graham P;Husbands P;Philippides A
• 通讯作者: Philippides A

Coordinating compass-based and nest-based flight directions during bumblebee learning and return flights

• DOI: 10.1242/jeb.081463
• 发表时间: 2013-03-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
• 影响因子: 2.8
• 作者: Collett, Thomas S.;de Ibarra, Natalie Hempel;Philippides, Andrew
• 通讯作者: Philippides, Andrew