[Tyler]

Fly's Eyes Inspire Robot Vision
     


The Cognition for Technical
Systems research group in Munich has been working on improved
robot vision systems based on fly vision. Why?
The fly's brain is hardly bigger than a pinhead, too small
by far to enable the fly's feats if it functioned exactly the way the
human brain does. It must have a simpler and more efficient way of
processing images from the eyes into visual perception, and that is a
subject of intense interest for robot builders.

The
article notes that some flies process images at 100 frames per
second, allowing in-flight obstacle avoidance with millisecond response
time, something you may have noticed if you ever tried to swat a fly. In
particular the researchers are focusing (no pun intended) on optical
flow, or as they call it, "optical flux fields". The fly's optical flux
field implementation is made up of a first layer of neurons that process
the raw input from each compound eye element and feed it to a second
stage composed of only 60 neurons for each hemisphere, which
reduce the visual field to a series of motion vectors giving the
speed and direction of everything it sees. Condylostylus fly
macro image by flickr user Opo Terser
   

http://robots.net/article/2894.html