The visual responses of female mosquitoes during appetitive and attraction flights to conspicuous features of their environment were reviewed. These studies showed for both flights long-range orientation (positive) could be followed by a short-range response (negative) to avoid the goal. In conjunction with the optomotor anemotactic response, appetitive flights are controlled by visual orientat...

Swifts, Apus apus, spend the night aloft and this offers an opportunity to test the degree of adaptability of bird orientation and flight to different ecological situations. We predicted the swifts' behaviour by assuming that they are adapted to minimize energy expenditure during the nocturnal flight and during a compensatory homing flight if they become displaced by wind. We tested the predict...

UAV Photogrammetry today already enjoys a largely automated and efficient data processing pipeline. However, the goal of dispensing with Ground Control Points looks closer, as dual-frequency GNSS receivers are put on board. This paper reports on the accuracy in object space obtained by GNSS-supported orientation of four photogrammetric blocks, acquired by a senseFly eBee RTK and all flown accor...

The aim of this study was to investigate the variability in 1m springboard forward pike dives (101B). Variability of body orientation angle at takeoff and water entry together with joint angle time histories of 15 forward pike dives, performed by an international diver, were determined using video analysis. A computer simulation model was used to investigate the effects of initial conditions va...

Does intruder group size and orientation affect flight initiation distance in birds?— Wildlife managers use flight initiation distance (FID), the distance animals flee an approaching predator, to determine set back distances to minimize human impacts on wildlife. FID is typically estimated by a single person; this study examined the effects of intruder number and orientation on FID. Three diffe...

The control and perception of body orientation and motion are subserved by multiple sensory and motor mechanisms ranging from relatively simple, peripheral mechanisms to complex ones involving the highest levels of cognitive function and sensory-motor integration. Vestibular contributions to body orientation and to spatial localization of auditory and visual stimuli have long been recognized. T...

Navigational Efficiency of Nocturnal ‘Myrmecia’ Ants Suffers at Low Light Levels 5 Spatial memory and stereotypy of flight paths by big brown bats in cluttered surroundings 5 Bumblebee calligraphy: the design and control of flight motifs in the learning and return flights of Bombus terrestris 6 Coordinating compass-based and nest-based flight directions during bumblebee learning and return flig...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are increasingly used for topographic mapping. Despite the flexibility gained when using those devices, one has to invest more effort for ground control measurements compared to conventional photogrammetric airborne data acquisition, because positioning devices on UAVs are generally less accurate. Additionally, the limited quality of employed end-user cameras asks...

Flying animals have six degrees of freedom of movement in space: three of translation along their body axes (lift, slip, thrust), and three of rotation about these axes (yaw, pitch, roll). For aerodynamical reasons, however, they maintain on average a characteristic flight attitude, i.e. a particular orientation of their body with respect to the gravity field. Translatory and yaw movements have...