The simulations suggest that optimal strategies for robotic vehicles
Washington: As per a new study, insect mating behavior has lessons for airborne robots (drones).
Male moths locate females by navigating along the latter's pheromone (odor) plume, often flying hundreds of meters to do so. Two strategies are involved to accomplish this: males must find the outer envelope of the pheromone plume, and then head upwind.
The University Of California - Riverside entomologists modeled plumes' dispersal and insects' flight strategies. Their model was based in part on the observed behavior of the gypsy moth in forests and in experiments in wind tunnels. The use of computer simulations allowed testing of many conditions that could not be observed directly in the field.
The simulations suggest that optimal strategies for robotic vehicles, airborne or ground-based, programmed to contact an odor plume need not involve the detection of wind flow in setting a foraging path.
Researcher Ring Carde said that their simulations shows that random walks, heading randomly with respect to wind and changing direction periodically, create the most efficient paths for the initial discovery of the plume and consequently the likelihood of the moth locating its source.
Carde added that such strategies are most apt to result in contact with plumes. Their simulations show that paths aimed downwind are least successful.
He explained that in the model once the odor plume is encountered, the virtual moth navigates a course upwind to the odor�s source.
One application of the work may be in using airborne drones to find sources of odors from pollutants. Such drones could mimic natural orientation paths of insects searching for odors.
Study results appear online in Integrative and Comparative Biology.
( Source : ANI )
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