Of Bees, Birds, and uFFFDBots

Flying insects and birds are surprisingly competent at moving and navigating in their environment, despite the fact that they possess brains that are very much smaller than our own and which carry far fewer neurons. Evidently these creatures are using vision sensors and principles of information processing and guidance that are not only effective, but also computationally simple. The past couple of decades have seen an increased interest in discovering the principles that underlie these behaviors and using them to create novel, biologically inspired vision systems for the guidance of aircraft. This article highlights some of the unexpected insights that biology has delivered about insect navigation and some of the useful applications of these insights to aircraft guidance.