The function of a visual system is to condense and transform patterns of light into a form that is meaningful to the rest of the brain and that can also be propagated to enable movement. Interestingly, how a moving visual scene is processed by the nervous system can look differently depending upon whether the animal […]
Plants and their pollinators must interact with changing airflow while simultaneously interacting as individual organisms. For flying pollinators, this includes flight through gusts and performing complex aerial maneuvers. Recent studies have begun to explore how these animals alter behavior in response to unsteady air, but we do not know if these conditions represent the local […]
Animals such as cockroaches must coordinate the movements of multiple legs, which are coupled components of a complex hybrid-dynamical system, in order to stably run. Coordination could be achieved through a decentralized control architecture, where a motor command for a particular muscle is only informative of the variation of the local states of the limb, […]
Hawkmoths, like Manduca sexta, hover and track moving flowers during natural foraging in low light environments. Neural recordings from the visual part of the moth’s brain have suggested that as light levels drop, the moth changes its sensitivity to light by integrating light for a longer period of time. Such a strategy raises the possibility […]
In an earlier research project with Dr. Jean-Michel Mongeau (now professor at PSU) we looked at the how cockroaches use their antennae as to feel surface in front of them and navigate in low light. Our approach in that project was to find the simplest control law the cockroaches could be using to maneuver by […]
Locomotion is an inherently closed-loop process. What that means is that when we move it changes how we perceive the world — turning to your left is like the world around you rotating to the right. As a result, what we see (or sense) is the difference between how an object in our world is […]
Animals must sense their environment in order to navigate. American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana L.) in the natural world often face navigation challenges in cluttered, low-light environments. To supplement their vision, they use their antenna as tactile probes. They can track surfaces with their long antennae by letting the antenna bend against the surface and rapidly […]