RoboCrab: An integrative approach to the natural ecology of decision making. The project aims to analyse and model the sophisticated and context-dependent escape behaviour of fiddler crabs under both natural conditions and in controlled laboratory settings. A crucial problem for biology is to understand how animals can make adaptive decisions in natural, complex sensory environments; such understanding also has direct application to robotics. The project plans to examine the effects of eye stabi ....RoboCrab: An integrative approach to the natural ecology of decision making. The project aims to analyse and model the sophisticated and context-dependent escape behaviour of fiddler crabs under both natural conditions and in controlled laboratory settings. A crucial problem for biology is to understand how animals can make adaptive decisions in natural, complex sensory environments; such understanding also has direct application to robotics. The project plans to examine the effects of eye stabilisation and oscillation, record from key neural stages using naturalistic stimuli to derive precise algorithms, and integrate and test the results on a robot model – RoboCrab. This may provide new insight into the integration of low-level sensory input with behavioural decision making circuits and the evolution of escape behaviours.Read moreRead less
Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of ....Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of visual navigational cues, as well as the opportunity to study the brains of the tethered ants as they solve the real-world challenge of finding home. This may reveal how simple brains efficiently solve navigational tasks, which may inform both cognitive biology and bio-inspired computation.Read moreRead less
Self-organised communication as a foundation of large, complex societies. This Project aims to investigate how evolution has shaped the self-organisation of robust communication networks that emerge in large animal collectives from the actions of individuals following only simple, local rules. It expects to generate new knowledge into the fundamental principles guiding the self-organisation of networks that can sustain a complex society. Empirical work with ant colonies will inform the construct ....Self-organised communication as a foundation of large, complex societies. This Project aims to investigate how evolution has shaped the self-organisation of robust communication networks that emerge in large animal collectives from the actions of individuals following only simple, local rules. It expects to generate new knowledge into the fundamental principles guiding the self-organisation of networks that can sustain a complex society. Empirical work with ant colonies will inform the construction of simulation models to push the investigation beyond experimental limits. The Project should significantly advance our understanding of how communication networks enable the development of large societies, and thus of how to better manage autonomous man-made networks, most importantly the Internet-of-Things.Read moreRead less
Acquiring and Using Views for Homing. The aim of the project is to investigate how insects acquire and use scene memories for homing, a crucially important task for most animals. In bees and wasps, these memories are acquired during learning flights when leaving the nest. This fast, active learning process underpins much of the insects' navigational competence, but it remains unknown how it is controlled and how in detail memories guide returns to the nest. It is intended to use the latest camer ....Acquiring and Using Views for Homing. The aim of the project is to investigate how insects acquire and use scene memories for homing, a crucially important task for most animals. In bees and wasps, these memories are acquired during learning flights when leaving the nest. This fast, active learning process underpins much of the insects' navigational competence, but it remains unknown how it is controlled and how in detail memories guide returns to the nest. It is intended to use the latest camera-based reconstruction tools for the first time: to quantify the navigational information content of habitats including the visual information available to learning and homing insects, and to dynamically modify the insects’ natural visual environment in order to critically test hypotheses about acquisition and use of views for homing.Read moreRead less