Collaborative Research: Integrated Analysis of In-Flight Collision Avoidance Systems

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。所有动物都依赖于感觉、姿势和环境信息的整合来产生复杂的运动行为，如游泳、打网球或飞行。这个合作项目将研究神经系统如何根据肌肉的生物力学特性，以及外部世界通过物理定律对身体施加的机械和环境约束，将感官收集的信息转化为运动指令。研究这些复杂行为的一个有利的模型系统是飞行昆虫的避碰动作的产生，因为我们对它们的神经系统和昆虫飞行背后的空气动力学机制已经了解得很多。在这个项目上合作的三个小组分别位于贝勒医学院、莱斯大学和亚利桑那大学，他们将分别在神经生理学、先进的计算机建模技术和空气动力学工程方面带来互补的专业知识。这项工作将提供对飞行中碰撞避免的全面描述，以应对视觉威胁，从而有助于对复杂的感觉-运动转换基础的综合理解。在工作过程中收集的新见解可以应用于各种车辆的实时人工视觉系统和防撞系统的设计。最后，这个项目将有助于研究教育，让感兴趣的学生在研究生和本科生阶段通过各种暑期研究项目获得跨学科的实验室经验。贝勒医学院（Baylor College of Medicine）参与该项目的学生将学习如何从行为动物的大脑中记录神经活动，并模拟其对行为的影响。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).All animals rely on the integration of sensory, postural and environmental information to generate complex motor behaviors such as swimming, playing tennis or flying. This collaborative project will study how the nervous system transforms information gathered by the senses into motor commands, based on the biomechanical properties of the muscles as well as the mechanical and environmental constraints imposed on the body by the outside world through the laws of physics. A favorable model system to study these complex aspects of behavior is the generation of collision avoidance maneuvers in flying insects, as much is known about their nervous system and the aerodynamic mechanisms underlying insect flight. The three groups that will collaborate on this project are based at Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University and the University of Arizona and will bring complementary expertise in neurophysiology, advanced computer modeling techniques, and aerodynamic engineering, respectively. This work will provide a comprehensive description of in-flight collision avoidance in response to visual threats and will thus contribute to an integrated understanding of the basis of complex sensory-motor transformations underlying behavior. The new insights that will be gathered over the course of the work could be applied to the design of real-time artificial vision systems and collision avoidance systems for various vehicles. Finally, this project will contribute to research education by allowing interested students to acquire interdisciplinary laboratory experience at the graduate as well as the undergraduate level, through various summer research programs. Students involved in the project at Baylor College of Medicine will learn how to record nervous activity from the brain of behaving animals and model its impact on behavior.