Synergy in Fly Gaze Stabilization Revealed by Closed-Loop Virtual Reality
Open Access
- Author:
- Frisbie, John Crawford
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Jean-Michel Mongeau, Thesis Supervisor
Anne Elizabeth Martin, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Fruit Fly
Synergy
Gaze Stabilization
Closed-Loop
Virtual Reality
Drosophila - Abstract:
- Drosophila melanogaster, colloquially referred to as the fruit fly, provides an excellent model of highly maneuverable flapping flight in insects. Via gaze stabilization reflexes, the fruit fly is able to steady its line of sight to perform complex aerial maneuvers. Although the head and body of flies in free flight often move simultaneously to stabilize gaze, the existence or extent of synergies between the head and body remains unknown. The goal of this project was to design and implement an experiment to uncover this possible synergy in fly flight. Using a virtual reality arena, two experimental designs involved isolating the main effects of the head and wing subsystems separately. A third experiment tested the interaction between the wing and head subsystems when combined. Through machine vision software, wing steering efforts (a proxy for body torque) and head angles were fed back to the arena, allowing flies to control their visual experience in virtual reality closed-loop. By coupling a virtual object to head and wing motion, we assessed fixation performance by quantifying the object position over time. A linear mixed effect model with three fixed effects was proposed. In the proposed linear model Head Gain (HG) and Wing Gain (WG) alone had little effect on predicting the fly’s tracking performance (p = 0.6354 & p = 0.6415, respectively) whereas the interaction term (HG*WG) had a p value of 0.0425, suggesting a statistically significant interaction between HG and WG. The null hypothesis, H0, was that no interconnection existed between the head and wing subsystems. As a nonzero interconnection was discovered, H0 was rejected in favor of a synergetic interaction between head and body movement. This study provides new insights into insect flight control and could provide inspiration for the next generation of agile flying robots.