Characterisation and manipulation of urban light environments for fly control.

由苍蝇传播的疾病可在人类和其他动物中引起严重的危及生命的疾病，增加缺勤率并降低生产力。因此，蝇类防治是城市害虫防治的重要组成部分。目前控制苍蝇的方法是使用紫外线来吸引苍蝇到一个杀灭装置。然而，人们对苍蝇如何对人类活动周围的视觉线索做出更广泛的反应知之甚少。更好地了解城市苍蝇的视觉生态可以找到控制苍蝇的新方法，并导致改进陷阱的发展，以提高更远距离的吸引力，对人类的干扰更小，消耗更少的能量。该项目旨在从苍蝇的角度描绘城市视觉环境，包括全光谱颜色、偏振和图案等方面。学生将学习视觉生态学的成像和视觉系统依赖建模方法，并使用这些方法来研究关键城市环境的时空结构。然后，他们将通过实验操纵通过建模工作确定的关键视觉线索，研究苍蝇在远距离和短距离上的反应。目标是激发更好的控制技术，有效地控制城市环境中的苍蝇行为。新的工程挑战将包括飞行视觉模型和成像管道的开发，这将使飞行视角视觉环境的收集和量化成为可能。

Diseases spread by flies can cause serious life-threatening illness in humans and other animals, increase absenteeism and reduce productivity. Fly control is therefore an important part of urban pest control. Current approaches to fly control use ultraviolet light to attract flies to a kill device. However, little is known about how flies respond to visual cues around human activity more broadly. Understanding urban fly visual ecology better could find novel approached to fly control and lead to the development of refined traps that improve attraction over longer ranges, are less intrusive to humans, and consume less energy. This project aims to characterise urban visual environments from a fly's perspective, including aspects such as full-spectrum colour, polarisation and pattern. The student will be trained in imaging and visual system dependent modelling methods from visual ecology and use these to investigate the spatial and temporal structure of key urban environments. They will then experimentally manipulate key visual cues identified by this modelling work to investigate how flies respond at long and short ranges. The goal is to inspire better control technologies that effectively manipulate fly behaviour in urban environments. Novel engineering challenges will include development of a model of fy vision and an imaging pipeline that will enable collection and quantification of the fly-perspective visual environment.