The turn-back-and-look behaviour: bee versus robot

Honeybees and social wasps departing from a novel food source perform stere otype flight manoeuvres, termed the turn-back-and-look behaviour (TBL).]Bas ed on results of behavioural studies, it is proposed that the image motion generated by the TBL provides the insect with information about the three-d imensional structure of the goal's surroundings, thus enabling it to select reliable landmarks that will guide it to the goal upon return. The colour, shape, and size of landmarks, on the other hand, are learned mainly during arrival at the food source. However, when bees are prevented from learning these cues on arrival, they learn them during the TBL, despite the fact th at this performance does not require the use of image motion. A recently de veloped model shows that landmark learning can indeed be accomplished durin g the TBL by exploiting cues others than image motion. A mobile robot equip ped with the appropriate software selects, during the TBL, reliable marks a nd returns to the site of departure from different locations by accomplishi ng image matching along a two-dimensional vector field.