Spatial learning strategies, visual information acquisition and efficiency of local navigation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Egelhaaf
• Subject Area: Sensory and Behavioural Biology
• Term: from 2008 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 60188378

Some insects, such as bees or ants, demonstrate an extraordinary ability to learn the spatial location of their food sites and to return to these places. In bees the visual information relevant for navigation in the vicinity of the goal is actively organized by structured learning flights. Although it is clear that learning flights play an important role in establishing a visual representation of the goal location, it is still largely unknown (1) which components of this behavior are relevant to finding the goal, (2) what mechanisms bees employ to extract the relevant information from the complex spatio-temporal retinal input, (3) how bees use this information to establish spatial representations and to control behavior and (4) how these mechanisms can cope with unpredictable changes in the environment. To answer these fundamental questions will be the main objective of the proposed project. Novel approaches will be employed to separate behavioral sequences monitored with high-speed cameras into distinctive components and to reconstruct what the bee has seen during her learning and goal-seeking flights. The behavioral analysis will be complemented in a next project phase by modeling and implementing biological principles of local navigation in a gantry robot moving an artificial vision system in 3D space. Hence, this project, though mainly concerned with basic research, is, in the long run, likely to be relevant for artificial autonomous navigation systems.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Dr. Roland Kern; Professor Dr.-Ing. Ralf Möller