The dung beetle is the first known species to use the Milky Way to navigate at night. The beetle uses the constellation as a reference point to roll dung balls in a straight line away from its competitors.

Swedish researchers made the discovery in 2013, and a decade later, Australian engineers are busy modeling the same technique used by the dung beetle to develop an AI sensor that can accurately measure the orientation of the Milky Way in low light.

Professor Javaan Chahl, a remote sensing engineer at the University of South Australia, and his team of PhD students have used computer vision to show that the large streak of light that makes up the Milky Way is not affected by motion blur, unlike individual stars.

“Nocturnal dung beetles move their heads and bodies extensively when rolling dung balls across a field, and need a fixed reference point in the night sky to steer them in a straight line,” says Prof Chahl. “Their small compound eyes make it difficult to distinguish individual stars, especially when they are moving, while the Milky Way is clearly visible.”

In a series of experiments using a camera mounted on the roof of a vehicle, UniSA researchers captured images of the Milky Way while the vehicle was both stationary and moving. Using information from the images, they developed a computer vision system that reliably measures the orientation of the Milky Way, a first step toward building a navigation system.

Their findings are published in the journal Biomimetics.

According to Yiting Tao, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate at UniSA, the orientation sensor could be a backup method for stabilising satellites and helping drones and robots navigate in low light, even when there is a lot of blur from movement and vibrations.

“In the next step, I want to install the algorithm on a drone and control the aircraft during flight at night,” Tao says.

The sun helps many insects navigate during the day, including wasps, dragonflies, honeybees, and desert ants. At night, the moon also provides a reference point for nocturnal insects, but it is not always visible, which is why dung beetles and some moths use the Milky Way to orient themselves.

According to Professor Chahl, insect vision has long been a source of inspiration for engineers when it comes to navigation systems.

“Insects have been solving navigation problems for millions of years, including problems that even the most advanced machines struggle to solve. And they’ve done it in a tiny package. Their brains are made up of tens of thousands of neurons compared to billions of neurons in humans, and yet they still manage to find solutions in nature.”