Small brains, smart computations: Vision and navigation in honeybees, and applications to robotics Mandyam V. Srinivasan * Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Australia Abstract. Flying insects provide a clear demonstration that living organisms can display surprisingly competent mechanisms of guidance and navigation, despite possessing relatively small brains and simple nervous systems. Consequently, they are proving to be excellent organisms in which to investigate how visual information is exploited to guide locomotion and navigation. Three illustrative examples are described here, in the context of navigation to a destination. Bees negotiate narrow gaps by balancing the speeds of the images in the two eyes. The flight speed is regulated by holding constant the average image velocity as seen by the two eyes. Smooth landings on a horizontal surface are achieved by holding image velocity constant as the surface is approached, thus automatically ensuring that the flight speed is close to zero at touchdown. Tests of the feasibility of some of these navigational strategies, by implementation in robots, are described. D 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Insect vision; Flight; Optic flow; Landing; Terrain following 1. Introduction Insect eyes differ from vertebrate or human eyes in a number of ways. Unlike vertebrates, insects have immobile eyes with fixed-focus optics. Therefore, they cannot infer the distances to objects or surfaces from the extent to which the directions of gaze must converge to view the object, or by monitoring the refractive power that is required to bring the image of the object into focus on the retina. Furthermore, compared with human eyes, insects eyes are positioned much closer together and possess inferior spatial acuity 0531-5131/ D 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ics.2006.01.055 * Tel.: +61 2 6125 2409; fax: +61 2 6125 3808. E-mail address: M.Srinivasan@anu.edu.au. International Congress Series 1291 (2006) 30 – 37 www.ics-elsevier.com