Mandyam Srinivasan - "Small Brains - Smart Minds"

Recording of the speaker's talk at the Barcelona Brain and Technology Summer School, September 2012. Listen also to an interview with this and other speakers at www.csnetwork.eu/podcast.

"Flying insects are remarkably adept at seeing and perceiving the world and navigating effectively in it, despite possessing a brain that weighs less than a milligram and carries fewer than 0.01% as many neurons as ours does. This presentation will describe how honeybees use their vision to stabilize flight, control flight speed, negotiate narrow gaps, avoid mid-air collisions with other insects, and orchestrate flawless landings, using computational principles that are often elegant, simple, and unprecedented. We will also explore some of the processes that underlie learning, memory and “cognition” in these creatures, and describe opportunities for incorporating insect-inspired principles into the design of  autonomous aerial vehicles."