Dung beetles use the milky way at night to navigate. Engineers used the same technique to develop an artificial intelligence sensor for low-light navigation
An artificial intelligence sensor accurately measures the direction of the Milky Way.
New research draws inspiration from an insect species that evolved 130 million years ago to improve navigation systems in drones, robots and satellites.
The dung beetle is the first known species to use the Milky Way at night to navigate, focusing on the constellation as a reference point to roll dung balls in a straight line away from their competitors.
Swedish researchers discovered this in 2013 and a decade later, Australian engineers are applying the same technique to develop an artificial intelligence sensor that can accurately measure the orientation of the Milky Way in low light.
Professor Javaan Chahl, a remote sensing engineer at the University of South Australia, and his team of PhD students used computer vision to show that the large band of light that makes up the Milky Way is not affected by blur caused by the movement of the sky, unlike individual stars. Their findings were published in the journal Biomimetics.
The Milky Way as a navigation tool
Professor Chahal says: Nocturnal dung beetles move their heads and bodies substantially when rolling dung balls in a field, and need a fixed reference point in the night sky to help them move in a straight line. Their small, narrow eyes make it difficult to distinguish individual stars, especially when moving, while the Milky Way is clearly visible.
Professor Javan Chahal from the University of South Australia explains how dung beetles and the Milky Way are helping engineers improve navigation systems for drones, robots and satellites. Credit: University of South Australia
In a series of experiments using a camera mounted on the roof of a car, the UniSA researchers took pictures of the Milky Way while the car was also parked. Using information from these images, they developed a computer vision system that accurately measures the direction of the Milky Way, which is the first step in building a navigation system.
Research findings and future directions
Iting Tao, a PhD candidate at UniSA and lead author of the paper, says the directional sensor could be a backup method to stabilize satellites and help drones and robots navigate in low light, even when there's a lot of blur caused by movement and vibrations.
The next step for her is to program the algorithm on a drone and allow it to control the aircraft while flying at night.
The sun helps many insects navigate the day, including wasps, dragonflies, bees, and desert ants. At night, the moon also provides a reference point for nocturnal insects, but it is not always visible, so dung beetles and some butterflies use the milky way to navigate.
Professor Chahal says that the way insects navigate has always been an inspiration to engineers in the field of navigation systems.
According to him, we see that insects have solved navigational problems for millions of years, including problems that even the most advanced machines struggle with. And they did it in a very small package. Their brains contain tens of thousands of neurons compared to billions of neurons in humans, and they still manage to find solutions from the natural world.
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Comments
Evolution Gentlemen Evolution The beetle with its poor senses has developed the ability to observe the stars. And not only that, but also to navigate herself
The amazing thing is that any average person when shown the milky way took half a minute to a minute or more to take in the milky way.
But no, the beetle immediately picked up the Milky Way
And how sophisticated evolution is
Simply unbelievable
Well done to the beetle.
Or is the whole evolution thing somewhere far far away on the milky way
In the end, it turns out that man cannot teach the laws of nature to any animal, but animals, no matter how small, are more sophisticated than man and teach man new rules and new laws and new knowledge. Science is renewed by the right of the living world.