The Future Fellowships Scheme was introduced to promote research in areas of critical national importance by giving outstanding researchers incentives to conduct their research in Australia. The aim of Future Fellowships is to attract and retain the best and brightest mid-career researchers.

Project Summary

Ensuring optimal information processing at the limits of size and ambient light is a challenge for technical systems, but has been elegantly solved by animals. The challenge of navigation is similar for animals of all sizes and in both day and night. This project aims to conduct a comparative analysis to identify the consequence of size and light on the information processing capacities for visual navigation. Outcomes of this project will reveal the behavioural and physiological adaptations needed and the costs associated with navigating in the dimmest of habitats and at the smallest of sizes. Identifying such optimal biological solutions for robust navigation will be relevant for image processing, computer vision and robotics.

(FT140100221, 2014-2018, administered by ANU, $770K).