Bee-Nav: Tiny Neural Network Inspired by Honeybee Learning Flights Enables Visual Homing in Simulation and Limited Real-World Drone Tests

A Nature research paper proposes a navigation strategy called Bee-Nav inspired by honeybee learning flights. Bee-Nav uses a tiny neural network trained during robotic learning flights to map omnidirectional images to a home vector based on path integration. Honeybees perform one to several short learning flights before departing on longer exploration or foraging trips.

Honeybees can fly several kilometres from their hive. The learning flight trajectory fits in a 10-m-radius circle around the home location. 00% of the total flight area.

In simulation 1,000 foraging flights were tested using a block-wave outbound search pattern followed by straight inbound trajectories based on noisy path integration.

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Path integration drift in the real robot was measured using a downward-looking optical flow sensor, laser for height, and gyro for heading. 5 m of home for 100% of 30–110-m flights.

In real-world experiments a small drone achieved 70% success for 200–600-m flights in windy conditions. The small drone used a 42-kB neural network for 200–600-m flights. 3-kB attention neural network was used in NVIDIA Isaac simulator visual homing experiments.

In ten different simulated forest environments Bee-Nav achieved 100% success rate within the LHA radius. 5 times the LHA radius depending on the simulated environment. Within the LHA the neural network angular errors were smaller than about 40° and distance errors smaller than 2 m.

Visual homing is generally successful if angular errors stay below 90°. Bee-Nav visual homing performed substantially better than a snapshot-based approach and a perfect memory approach that stored all learning-flight images. The state-of-the-art tiny flying robot prior to this work used 500 kB of memory for navigating in a 4 × 5-m area.

A recent robotics study used a 9-kB neural network for visual homing up to 18 m outdoors. The proposed navigation strategy will be vital for resource-constrained robots that perform tasks while travelling from and to a home location. Separately, Thomas Dee released a paper earlier this month finding that after two years of smartphone bans students showed better psychological well-being but mostly unaffected state assessment scores.

Academic losses began in 2013 according to a Hoover Institution report. Laws restricting smartphone use in schools have spread rapidly in the past few years.