Imitating moth's flying can help build better drone

Washington: A team of researchers from the University of California - Riverside has used a computer model to simulate mating behaviour in moths that can help develop better drones.

Male moths locate females by navigating along the latter's pheromone (odour) plume, often flying hundreds of metres to do so.

Two strategies are involved to accomplish this: Males must find the outer envelope of the pheromone plume and then head upwind.

According to entomologists, such insect behaviour has implications for airborne robots (drones) that ply the sky searching for signature odours.

The entomologists modelled plumes' dispersal and insects' flight strategies.

Their model was based in part on the observed behaviour of the gypsy moth in forests and in experiments in wind tunnels.

The simulations suggest that optimal strategies for robotic vehicles like airborne or ground-based programmed to contact an odour plume need not involve the detection of wind flow in setting a foraging path.

"Our simulations shows that random walks - heading randomly with respect to wind and changing direction periodically - create the most efficient paths for the initial discovery of the plume and consequently the likelihood of the moth locating its source," explained Ring Carde, distinguished professor of entomology who led the research.

According to Carde, in the model once the odour plume is encountered, the virtual moth navigates a course upwind to the odour's source.

This process is well understood in flying insects such as moths, flies and mosquitoes.

But first the plume must be found and the best rules for an efficient searching strategy find it quickly with a minimal energy expenditure - had not been established.

One application of the work may be in using airborne drones to find sources of odours from pollutants.

Such drones could mimic natural orientation paths of insects searching for odours.

The results appeared online in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology.