Often considered nothing more than a summer nuisance, researchers are looking for a little help from the common blow fly to help create robotics technology that can learn from their environment.

 

Members of Munich, Germany's so-called "excellence cluster," the Cognition for Technical Systems, or “CoTeSys,” announced they are undertaking a one-of-a-kind project with the pesky insect. The group is testing a flight simulator for flies. Under the project, researchers are investigating what really goes on in flies' brains while they're in flight.

 

Researchers from CoTeSys, an initiative co-founded by 100 scientists and engineers from five universities and institutes, are hoping to translate their learnings to develop robots that, like the fly, can observe their environment, “learn” from what they see, and react appropriately to a situation.

 

For example, a blow fly’s brain is no larger than a pin head, yet the insect has the ability to take in 100 images per second, versus a human’s ability to perceive 25 images per second. So, brain researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology are investigating how flies understand their environment and maneuver so efficiently. Experts want to capture that knowledge to help robots better navigate their surroundings through cameras and have an easier time making sense of what they see.

 

The team developed a flight simulator, which includes a wraparound display where researchers present various patterns, movements, and sensory stimuli to blow flies. The insect is held by a halter and electrodes register the fly’s brain cells’ reactions. Researchers can then observe and analyze what happens in a fly's brain when the insect flies around a room.

 

Early results show that the way flies process images differs from the way the human brain processes visual signals. Flies construct a model of their various movements in their brains. The speed and direction under which objects before the fly's eyes appear to move generate a pattern of motion vectors, called the optical flux field. Then, a higher level of the brain’s vision center, the so-called “lobula plate,” assesses the pattern. Motion information from both eyes are then brought together using specialized neurons called VS cells, giving the fly a precise fix on its position and movement.

 

"Through our results, the network of VS cells in the fly's brain responsible for rotational movement is one of the best understood circuits in the nervous system,” Prof. Alexander Borst, the neurobiologist that helped develop the project, said in a statement.

 

Researchers from the Technical University of Munich, or TUM, are using that insight to develop intelligent machines learn from the situation and interact with people directly and safely. TUM researchers are developing small, flying robots. A computer system for visual analysis, which was inspired by the example of the fly's brain, controls the robots’ position and movement in flight.

 

For example, the Autonomous City Explorer mobile robot was tasked with finding its way from the institute to Marienplatz in Munich by stopping passersby and asking for directions.  As shown in a video here, the robot had to interpret people’s gestures and negotiate sidewalks and traffic crossings to reach its destination, which was about a mile away.

 

Insight learned from the flight simulator for flies offers researchers an approach that could be simple easily portable to robots technology, officials said.

 

As TMCnet reported, the world of robotics is gaining ground as technology progresses. Robotics is progressively being used in elderly homes, especially in the Asia, to help older adults in their everyday lives. GeckoSystems Intl. Corp., for example, is one company emerging in the Mobile Service Robot industry with its "Mobile Robot Solutions for Safety, Security and Service."