Drosophila-inspired visual orientation model on the Eye-Ris platform: Experiments on a roving robot

Behavioral experiments on fruit flies had shown that they are attracted by near objects and they prefer front-to-back motion. In this paper a visual orientation model is implemented on the Eye-Ris vision system and tested using a roving platform. Robotic experiments are used to collect statistical data regarding the system behaviour: followed trajectories, dwelling time, distribution of gaze direction and others strictly resembling the biological experimental setup on the flies. The statistical analysis has been performed in different scenarios where the robot faces with different object distribution in the arena. The acquired data has been used to validate the proposed model making a comparison with the fruit fly experiments. © 2011 SPIE.