Odor-Guided Navigation in Walking and Flying Insects

Mark A. Willis

Abstract:	Perhaps the most remarkable olfactory task achieved by insects is that of locating distant resources using airborne chemical cues. At minimum this requires two pieces of information; the presence of the chemical and the direction that the wind is blowing. Whether the odor tracking insect is walking or flying determines how this information is acquired from the environment. The goals of the work presented here are to understand the behavioral and physiological mechanisms that enable walking and flying insects to use information provided by specific chemicals and wind, and other information from their environment, to locate distant resources including mates, food and territories. Furthermore, we are beginning to use robotic agents to both test our hypotheses of how insects control their navigation behavior and develop odor-guided control algorithms for terrestrial and airborne robots.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2004) June 7 - 9, 2004 Dayton Marriott Hotel Dayton, OH
Pages:	131 - 137
Cite this article:	Willis, Mark A., "Odor-Guided Navigation in Walking and Flying Insects," Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2004), Dayton, OH, June 2004, pp. 131-137.
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