Researchers are trying to improve sensing technology by learning from nature’s design book.

RMIT experts have looked to bees for lessons to help robots and drones understand the world more accurately.

“For a digital system like a camera or a robot the colour of objects often changes. Currently this problem is dealt with by assuming the world is, on average, grey,” says RMIT’s Associate Professor Adrian Dyer.

“This means it’s difficult to identify the true colour of ripe fruit or mineral rich sands, limiting outdoor colour imaging solutions by drones, for example.”

Bees have three extra eyes (ocelli) on the top of their head that look directly at the sky, and a multidisciplinary research team has discovered that the ocelli contain two colour receptors that are perfectly tuned for sensing the colour of ambient light.

Bees also have two main compound eyes that directly sense flower colours from the environment.

“Physics suggests the ocelli sensing of the colour of light could allow a brain to discount the naturally coloured illumination which would otherwise confuse colour perception,” says Dr Jair Garcia, lead author of a new study on the topic.

“But for this to be true the information from the ocelli would have to be integrated with colours seen by the compound eyes.”

To test if this happened, Dr Yu-Shan Hung (University of Melbourne) mapped the neural tracings from ocelli and showed neural projection did indeed feed to the key colour processing areas of the bee brain.

Fellow researcher Professor Andrew Greentree said: “It is rare that physics, biology, neuro-anatomy and ecology all fit together, but here we have it.”

The system closely predicts previously observed behaviour of bees foraging in complex environments and provides a new solution for illuminations as diverse as natural forest light, sunlight, or shade.

“We’re using bio-inspired solutions from nature to tackle key problems in visual perception. This discovery on colour constancy can be implemented into imaging systems to enable accurate colour interpretation,” Dr Dyer said.

Professor John Endler (Deakin University) said: “The discover provides a superb solution to a classic problem and makes colour constancy computationally inexpensive.”