The time-compensated celestial compass of insects

Abstract

We propose a celestial compass sensor and model that immitates the one of insects. The design of our sensor is based on the fan-like arrangement of the polarisation filters in the insect’s eyes. We propose a local processing pipeline of the light intensity and polarisation and how these integrate to create activity bumps in the ring attractors of central complex. We model the calcium oscillations based on light sensitive proteins and synchronise their phase to noon for stability. We combine ring attractor bumps (spatial information) with activity oscillations (temporal information) to spatiotemporally integrate the sun’s position and time into a geocentric compass3