From Fly Vision to Robot Vision: Re-Construction as a Mode of Discovery

Abstract

This chapter addresses basic issues on how vision links up with action and guides locomotion in biological and artificial creatures. The thorough knowledge gained over the past five decades on insects’ sensory-motor abilities and the neuronal substrates involved has provided us with a rich source of inspiration for designing tomorrow’s self-guided vehicles and micro-vehicles, which will be able to cope with unforeseen events on the ground, under water, in the air, in space, on other planets, and inside the human body. Insects can teach us some shortcuts to designing agile autonomous robots. At the same time, constructing these ’biorobots’ based on specific biological principles gives us a unique opportunity of checking the soundness and robustness of these principles by bringing them face to face with the real physical world. Here we describe the visually guided terrestrial and aerial robots we have developed on the basis of our biological findings. Their architecture is akin to that of biological systems in spirit, and so is their parallel and analog mode of signal processing. As we learn more about signal processing and sensory-motor integration in nervous systems, we may eventually be able to design even better machines and micromachines than those which Nature has to offer. The millions of insect species constitute a gigantic untapped reservoir of ideas for highly sophisticated sensors, actuators and control systems.