Visual perception of mixed homogeneous textures in flying pigeons

Abstract

In this study, we simulated the visual perception of the terrain in flying pigeons over combined homogeneous terrain with multiple textures – forest and grassland, water surface and seacoast. The surfaces along the pigeon’s flight trajectory were considered as mixed textures observed from a bird’s eye view. In the proposed method, the main structural elements for the analyzed textures were selected and then statistically homogeneous characteristics of the texture were determined. The textural characteristics and their changes during flight were recorded in the form of distinct “event channels”. For different types of terrain, the frequency characteristics of visual perception were calculated and compared. In addition, we considered the possibility of comparing the frequency characteristics of the textures with data regarding the pigeon’s rhythmic brain activity. Spatial data—open-access remote sensing datasets—were processed using the geographical information system QGIS. Our results show that recognizing mixed landscape textures can help solve navigation tasks when flying over terrain with sparse landmarks.