Flies are capable of rapid, coordinated flight through complex environments.
This impressive visual system has been studied by neurophysiologists since the 1960s, and much is now understood about its operation and organization. We have begun to use this information and implement models of fly visual motion processing in VLSI circuits. We have compared our sensor's performance against a real fly in closed-loop flight simulation experiments and demonstrated similar behavior. We have also used our sensor to correct for physical asymmetries in an autonomous robot. We are currently investigating efficient digital implementations of this motion detection architecture for use in real-time video and speech processing.