Now, a decade later, researchers at the University of South Australia (UniSA) are using that breakthrough as inspiration for a new project aimed at improving navigation for satellites.
They have developed a computer vision system that reliably measures the orientation of the Milky Way, which could one day lead to a back-up method of stabilising satellites in low light.
University of South Australia remote sensing engineer Professor Javaan Chahl and his team of PhD students used computer vision to demonstrate that the large stripe of light that forms the Milky Way is not affected by motion blur, unlike individual stars.
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“Nocturnal dung beetles move their head and body extensively when rolling balls of manure across a field, needing a fixed orientation point in the night sky to help them steer in a straight line,” Chahl said. “Their tiny compound eyes make it difficult to distinguish individual stars, particularly while in motion, whereas the Milky Way is highly visible.”
In a series of experiments using a camera mounted to a vehicle’s roof, the UniSA researchers captured images of the Milky Way while the vehicle was both stationary and moving.
Using information from those images, they developed a computer vision system that reliably measures the orientation of the Milky Way, which is the first step towards building a navigation system.
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Their findings have been published in the journal Biomimetics.
“For the next step, I want to put the algorithm on a drone and allow it to control the aircraft in flight during the night,” said UniSA PhD candidate Yiting Tao, the paper’s lead author.
Researchers believe beetles use the Milky Way because, unlike the moon, it’s always visible.
“Insects have been solving navigational problems for millions of years, including those that even the most advanced machines struggle with,” Chahl said.
“And they’ve done it in a tiny little package. Their brains consist of tens of thousands of neurons compared to billions of neurons in humans, yet they still manage to find solutions from the natural world.”
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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