Author: Alexander Mesecke
Mesecke, Alexander, 2019 Simulating flight from an insect’s perspective: determining whether or not filmed interactions involving Eristalis tenax hoverflies are pursuits, Flinders University, College of Science and Engineering
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The aim of this project was to develop a program that would take as input three-dimensional position trajectories filmed as part of a previous experiment. These positions were isolated from recordings of interactions involving Eristalis tenax hoverflies, and various other insects and inanimate objects. The program would allow the user to select which of the participants in the interaction was to be the observer, and a simulation of the original flight would be reconstructed from the perspective of that observer.
In order to perform this simulation, additional information not present in the original data had to be estimated. To test the validity of the methods used to create this simulation, the program also determined which interactions were likely to be pursuits, and which were not. This was achieved by using the characteristics of the simulation and the trajectories.
Although the methods were found to be consistent according to statistical tests, the determination of pursuit was inconclusive.
Keywords: Eristalis tenax, hoverfly, drone fly, flight simulation, reconstructing filmed interactions, insect perspective, FlyFly, motion vision
Subject: Engineering thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2019
School: College of Science and Engineering
Supervisor: Sherry Randhawa