A biologically inspired facilitation mechanism enhances the detection and pursuit of targets of varying contrast

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Date

2014

Authors

Bagheri, Z.
Wiederman, S.
Cazzolato, B.
Grainger, S.
O'Carroll, D.

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Conference paper

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Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA 2014), 2014, pp.1-5

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Zahra M. Bagheri, Steven D. Wiederman, Benjamin S. Cazzolato, Steven Grainger, David C. O'Carroll

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16th International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA) (25 Nov 2014 - 27 Nov 2014 : Wollongong, NSW)

Abstract

Many species of flying insects detect and chase prey or conspecifics within a visually cluttered surround, e.g. for predation, territorial or mating behavior. We modeled such detection and pursuit for small moving targets, and tested it within a closed-loop, virtual reality flight arena. Our model is inspired directly by electrophysiological recordings from ‘small target motion detector’ (STMD) neurons in the insect brain that are likely to underlie this behavioral task. The front-end uses a variant of a biologically inspired ‘elementary’ small target motion detector (ESTMD), elaborated to detect targets in natural scenes of both contrast polarities (i.e. both dark and light targets). We also include an additional model for the recently identified physiological ‘facilitation’ mechanism believed to form the basis for selective attention in insect STMDs, and quantify the improvement this provides for pursuit success and target discriminability over a range of target contrasts.

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© 2014 IEEE

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