Full papers submitted for review

Straw, A.D., Branson, K., Neumann, T.R., and Dickinson, M.H. (submitted January 10, 2009 to Computer Vision and Image Understanding) Multi-camera Realtime 3D Tracking of Multiple Flying Animals

This paper describes a system we developed to track insects and birds over large volumes. The promise of this new system to study the neurobiology of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is particularly relevant given the ability to track genetically modified organisms automatically without any handling or marking of individual animals. Furthermore, because the system operates in realtime, two important properties may be exploited for neurobiological studies. First, ‘virtual reality’ type experiments are possible in which the experimental artificially modifies the coupling dynamics of visual feedback to a freely flying fly. Secondly, sensory stimuli or experimental triggers may be presented in a context dependent manner, thus increasing the frequency with which an experimental trial may be repeated.

Straw, A.D., Dickinson, M.H. (submitted April 2, 2009 to Source Code for Biology and Medicine) Motmot, an open-source toolkit for realtime video acquisition and analysis

Refereed full papers

Fry, S.N. Rohrseitz, N. Straw, A.D. and Dickinson, M.H. (2009) Visual flight speed control in Drosophila melanogaster. Journal of Experimental Biology 212(8): 1120-1130. doi: 10.1242/jeb.020768

Straw, Andrew D., Rainsford, Tamath, & O'Carroll, David C. (2008) Contrast sensitivity of insect motion detectors to natural images. Journal of Vision 8(3). doi: 10.1167/8.3.32

This paper made the surprising finding that fly motion detecting neurons are insensitive to the contrast of natural scenes. This contrast invariance is not predicted from basic ‘correlator’ models of motion detection and suggests a mechanism by which the apparent discrepancy between correlator-like results obtained from electrophysiology may be reconciled with results from freely flying insects, in which ability to estimate velocity seems at odds with the correlator model.

Straw, Andrew D. (2008) Vision Egg: An Open-Source Library for Realtime Visual Stimulus Generation. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics. doi: 10.3389/neuro.11.004.2008

Maimon, Gaby, Straw, Andrew D. & Dickinson, Michael H. (2008) A Simple Vision-Based Algorithm for Decision Making in Flying Drosophila. Current Biology 18(6): 464-470. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.054

Dickson, W.B., Straw, Andrew D., Dickinson, M.H. (2008) Integrative Model of Drosophila Flight. AIAA Journal 46(9). doi: 10.2514/1.29862

This paper combines detailed models of the visual system of the fly and the aerodynamic force generation capabilities of the fly into a single model of the fly which we then used to investigate control laws underlying insect flight. We found that for the model fly to navigate a corridor without colliding with the walls, a control law that generated straight flights punctuated by rapid turns was necessary to allow the visual system to time-average the noisy signal sufficiently to produce a reliable estimate of distance to the wall.

Fry, S. N., Rohrseitz, N., Straw, A. D. and Dickinson, M. H. (2008). TrackFly- Virtual Reality for a behavioral system analysis in free-flying fruit flies Journal of Neuroscience Methods. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2008.02.016

Straw, Andrew D., Warrant, Eric J., & O'Carroll, David C. (2006) A 'bright zone' in male hoverfly (Eristalis tenax) eyes and associated faster motion detection and increased contrast sensitivity. Journal of Experimental Biology 2006 209(21): 4339-4354. doi: 10.1242/jeb.02517

This paper found that a sexually dimorphic ‘bright zone’ (a region of enhanced light gathering ability) in the hoverfly eye was associated with faster motion detection and greater contrast sensitivity. These findings do not appear consistent with the role of wide-field motion detectors for estimating self-motion. Instead, the results suggest that the array of elementary motion detectors in the fly eye is a common pre-processing step used for both target tracking in addition to self-motion estimation.

Shoemaker, Patrick, O'Carroll, David C. and Straw, Andrew D. (2005) Velocity constancy and models for wide-field motion detection in insects. Biological Cybernetics, Vol. 93, No. 4, pp. 275-287. doi: 10.1007/s00422-005-0007-y

Fry, S. N., Müller, P., Baumann, H.-J., Straw, A. D., Bichsel, M. & Robert D. (2004) Context-dependent stimulus presentation to freely moving animals in 3D. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, Vol. 135(1-2), pp. 149-157. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2003.12.012

Refereed Conference Publications

Han, Shuo, Straw, Andrew D., Dickinson, Michael H. & Murray, Richard M. (2009) A Real-Time Helicopter Testbed for Insect-Inspired Visual Flight Control. Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation

Dickson, William B., Straw, Andrew D., Poelma, Christian, & Dickinson, Michael H. (2006) An Integrative Model of Insect Flight Control. Proceedings of the 44th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit. AIAA-2006-0034

Michael Epstein, Stephen Waydo, Sawyer B. Fuller, Will Dickson, Andrew Straw, Michael H. Dickinson and Richard M. Murray. (2007) Biologically Inspired Feedback Design for Drosophila Flight. 2007 American Control Conference (ACC).

Patrick A. Shoemaker, David C. O'Carroll, & Andrew D. Straw. (2001) Implementation of visual motion detection with contrast adaptation. Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4591, pp. 316-327. (SPIE Electronics and Structures for MEMS, Adelaide, December 2001).

Conference Abstracts

Andrew D Straw & David C O'Carroll (2003) Motion blur applied to eliminate artifacts in apparent motion displays [Abstract]. Journal of Vision, 3(9):782. Abstract for poster at 2003 Vision Science Society (VSS) meeting.

(more to come...)

Patents

Straw, A.D., O’Carroll, D.C. Realtime motion blur simulation. Australian provisional patent 2002952815, 22 November 2002. Adelaide Research and Innovation Pty Ltd.

Other

Fuller, Sawyer, B., Epstein, Michael, Waydo, Stephen, Dickson, William B., Straw, Andrew D., Dickinson, Michael H., and Murray, Richard M. (2007) Flight control in a flapping-wing fruit fly simulator. The Neuromorphic Engineer, 12 November 2007

Straw, Andrew D. Realtime Computing with Python. talk at the SciPy 2006 Conference.

Straw, Andrew D. (2003) Neural Responses to Moving Natural Scenes. Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Adelaide.

See also my open-source software resources.