Develop UAV from the positioning of the bumblebees

Scientists have developed unmanned planes from the ability of locating bees to find their nests.

By monitoring complex aircraft models and visual focus of insects, scientists have simulated the bee's ability to locate in the process of finding their nest and applying it to drone technology.

According to scientists, when the bee leaves the nest, they fly along the zigzag arc around the nest. While cruising along arcs, the bees will see their nests from different directions and distances, always keeping the image of the nest in the left or right view.

The vision of the bees is low in resolution, so they must determine the special features around their nest, such as rocks or fallen leaves, to find their way home.

These flights are called "learning flights" , allowing bees to navigate and note characteristics on the flight path, making the journey almost identical when returning, as technology reverse the trip.

The bee is considered a species that has the ability to determine the direction very well.

To learn more about this process and what the bees actually see, a group of Australian researchers noted the orientation of the bees painted with high-speed cameras.

They transferred a panoramic image along the flight path, and built 3D models of bees' habitats to see what was really going on inside. From here, researchers identified techniques used by these bees to return to their nest after a day of searching for food

Jochen Zeil, a leading scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra, said his team spent 10 years studying the technique."I was really surprised because we spent so much time figuring out what bees see," he said in a statement.

The process of simulating these bee's flight journeys shows that, on the flight path, when the bee meets something it recognizes, like a familiar tree, for example, it will move to the left or must depend on the next direction associated with that familiar feature. This bee species also uses ground features, like rocks and fallen sticks, to find its way home.

The researchers have also created a pair of videos, a video that simulates the "cockpit of a bumblebee" and a video showing their flight path.

The diagram on the left shows the journey (also known as the learning flight), the right shows the journey back to the bee's nest.

This research could be used to create sophisticated flying robots, creating new research directions in the application of this natural mechanism to UAV-unmanned aerial vehicle technology.

"It will be interesting if we apply the principles of learning and guidance from bees to check the validity and limitations of our studies , " Zeil said. "This discovery will also be extremely helpful with the development of robot functions."