{"413201":{"#nid":"413201","#data":{"type":"news","title":"How the Hawkmoth Sees, Hovers and Tracks Flowers in the Dark","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIt\u0027s difficult enough to see things in the dark, but what if you also had to hover in mid-air while tracking a flower moving in the wind? That\u0027s the challenge the hummingbird-sized hawkmoth (\u003Cem\u003EManduca sexta\u003C\/em\u003E) must overcome while feeding on the nectar of its favorite flowers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUsing high-speed infrared cameras and 3-D-printed robotic flowers, scientists have now learned how this insect juggles these complex sensing and control challenges \u2013 all while adjusting to changing light conditions. The work shows that the creatures can slow their brains to improve vision under low-light conditions \u2013 while continuing to perform demanding tasks.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhat the researchers have discovered could help the next generation of small flying robots operate efficiently under a broad range of lighting conditions. The research, supported by the National Science Foundation and Air Force Office of Scientific Research, was reported in the June 12 issue of the journal\u003Cem\u003E Science\u003C\/em\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThere has been a lot of interest in understanding how animals deal with challenging sensing environments, especially when they are also doing difficult tasks like hovering in mid-air,\u201d said Simon Sponberg, an assistant professor in the School of Physics and School of Applied Physiology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. \u201cThis is also a very significant challenge for micro air vehicles.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EScientists already knew that the moths, which feed on flower nectar during the evening and at dusk and dawn, use specialized eye structures to maximize the amount of light they can capture. But they also surmised that the insects might be slowing their nervous systems to make the best use of this limited light. But if they were slowing their brains to see better, wouldn\u2019t that hurt their ability to hover and track the motion of flowers?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESponberg and colleagues at the University of Washington studied this question using high-speed infrared cameras and nectar-dispensing robotic flowers that could be moved from side-to-side at different rates. While varying both the light conditions and the frequency at which the flowers moved, the researchers studied how well free-flying moths kept their tongues \u2013 known as proboscises \u2013 in the flowers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey also measured real flowers blowing in the wind to determine the range of motion the insects had to contend with in the wild.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe expected to see a tradeoff with the moths doing significantly worse at tracking flowers in low light conditions,\u201d said Sponberg. \u201cWhat we saw was that while the moths did slow down, that only made a difference if the flower was moving rapidly \u2013 faster than they actually move in nature.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the experiments, the moths tracked robotic flowers that were oscillating at rates of up to 20 hertz \u2013 twenty oscillations per second. That was considerably faster than the two-hertz maximum rate observed in real flowers. Because the moth\u2019s wings beat at a rate of about 25 strokes per second, they had to adjust their direction of movement with nearly every wingstroke \u2013 a major sensing, computational and control accomplishment.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis is really an extreme behavior, though the moth makes it look simple and elegant,\u201d said Sponberg. \u201cTo maneuver like this is really quite challenging. It\u2019s an extreme behavior from both a sensory and motor control perspective.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the natural world, light intensity varies 10 billion-fold from noon on a sunny day to midnight a cloudy evening. Operating in that range of luminosity is a challenge for both moths and the sensors on human-engineered systems. Understanding how natural systems adjust to this range of conditions could therefore have broader benefits.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIf we want to have robots or machine vision systems that are working under this broad range of conditions, understanding how these moths function under these varying light conditions would be very useful,\u201d Sponberg said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo gather the data reported in this paper, the researchers used a robotic flower able to move in one dimension. Recently, they\u2019ve used the actuator devices from a 3-D printer to build a robotic flower that moves in two or three dimensions, providing an additional challenge for the moths. In future research, Sponberg and his colleagues hope to incorporate their robotic flower into a low-speed wind tunnel to study the aerodynamic challenges the moths overcome \u2013 including the role of wing vortices and the flow-effect interaction of the insect\u2019s wings with the flowers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe hawkmoth has been studied extensively to investigate the fundamental principles governing the development and function of its neural system, noted Tom Daniel, a professor in the Department of Biology and co-director of the Institute for Neuroengineering at the University of Washington. Daniel\u2019s research group has experimentally characterized the response of flying hawkmoths, using a sensory input comprised of the linear sum of sine waves.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESponberg\u2019s paper, for which much of the data collection was done at the University of Washington while he was a postdoctoral researcher there, extends application of the \u201csum of sines\u201d approach, Daniel said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSimon\u2019s work took the formal methods of control theory to dissect out how neural circuits adapt to vast ranges of luminance levels,\u201d he explained. \u201cBy looking at the time delays in the movement dynamics of a freely-flying moth \u2013 interacting with the input of a robotically moved flower \u2013 Simon was able to extract the luminance dependent processing of the moth\u2019s central nervous system.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHuman engineered devices must often operate at various speeds and in different environments. Seeing how well an animal with a tiny brain was able to track complicated movements and adjust its performance to different light levels was a surprising result of the work, Sponberg said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis was an interesting example of how an organism can tune its brain to maintain its ability to gather food,\u201d he added. \u201cThe moths do suffer a tradeoff by slowing their brains, but that tradeoff doesn\u2019t end up mattering because it only affects their ability to track movements that don\u2019t exist in the natural way that flowers blow in the wind.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECITATION\u003C\/strong\u003E: Simon Sponberg, Jonathan P. Dyhr, Robert W. Hall and Tom L. Daniel, \u201cLuminance-dependent visual processing enables moth flights in low light,\u201d (Science 2015).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EResearch News\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E177 North Avenue\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAtlanta, Georgia 30332-0181 USA\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMedia Relations Contacts\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E) (404-894-6986).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWriter\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EUsing high-speed infrared cameras and robotic flowers, scientists have learned how the hawkmoth juggles the complex sensing and control challenges of seeing in the dark, hovering in mid-air and tracking moving flowers. The work shows that the creatures can slow their brains to improve vision under low-light conditions \u2013 while continuing to perform demanding tasks.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Scientists have learned how the hawkmoth juggles the complex sensing and control challenges of seeing in the dark, hovering in mid-air and tracking moving flowers."}],"uid":"27303","created_gmt":"2015-06-10 21:01:12","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:18:33","author":"John Toon","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-06-11T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-06-11T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"413121":{"id":"413121","type":"image","title":"Hawkmoth on flower","body":null,"created":"1449254222","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 18:37:02","changed":"1475895145","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:52:25","alt":"Hawkmoth on 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