AVDM: Angular Velocity Decoding Model Accounting for Visually Guided Flight Behaviours of the Bee

We present a new angular velocity estimation model for explaining the honeybee’s flight behaviours of tunnel centring and terrain following, capable of reproducing observations of the large independence to the spatial frequency and contrast of the gratings in visually guide flights of honeybees. The model combines both temporal and texture information to decode the angular velocity well. The angular velocity estimation of the model is little affected by the spatial frequency and contrast in synthetic grating experiments. The model is also tested behaviourally in Unity with the tunnel centring and terrain following paradigms. Together with the proposed angular velocity based control algorithms, the virtual bee navigates well in a patterned tunnel and can keep a certain distance from undulating ground with gratings in a series of controlled trials. The results coincide with both neuron spike recordings and behavioural path recordings of honeybees, demonstrating that the model can explain how visual motion is detected in the bee brain.Author summaryBoth behavioural and electro-physiological experiments indicate that honeybees can estimate the angular velocity of image motion in their retinas to control their flights, while the neural mechanism behind has not been fully understood. In this paper, we present a new model based on previous experiments and models aiming to reproduce similar behaviours as real honeybees in tunnel centring and terrain following simulations. The model shows a large spatial frequency independence which outperforms the previous model, and our model generally reproduces the wanted behaviours in simulations.