A Minimal Representation for Dead-Reckoning Navigation: Updating the Homing Vector

A number of organisms are capable of traveling directly back to the origin of locomotion after following a circuitous outbound path, using dead-reckoning navigation. We describe a minimal representation that could be used for such navigation. It involves keeping track of only the polar coordinates of the origin of locomotion with respect to the observer's current location. An exact solution is provided first, followed by a simplified solution, then a solution involving linearization of trigonometric functions. The paper also examines performance attainable with these solutions and briefly considers ways in which the model might be modified to account for human navigation without reference to landmarks.

[1]  R Wehner,et al.  Path integration in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis. , 1988, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[2]  J. L. Gould.  The Locale Map of Honey Bees: Do Insects Have Cognitive Maps? , 1986, Science.

[3]  C. I. Howarth,et al.  The Mental Maps of the Blind: The Role of Previous Visual Experience , 1982 .

[4]  Horst Mittelstaedt,et al.  Homing by Path Integration , 1982 .

[5]  R L Klatzky,et al.  Spatial and movement-based heuristics for encoding pattern information through touch. , 1985, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[6]  U. Paul.  Do Geese Use Path Integration for Walking Home , 1982 .

[7]  J. Jonides,et al.  Evidence of hierarchies in cognitive maps , 1985, Memory & cognition.

[8]  Herbert H. Hall.  ALTERNATE APPROACHES TO AUTOMOTIVE NAVIGATION , 1986 .

[9]  S. Doherty,et al.  A conceptual model and empirical analysis of children's acquisition of spatial knowledge , 1985 .

[10]  W Richards,et al.  “Seeing” shapes that are almost totally occluded: A new look at Parks’s camel , 1986, Perception & psychophysics.

[11]  D. R. Montello,et al.  Remembering Changes in Direction , 1989 .

[12]  T. Gärling,et al.  Acquisition of locational information about reference points during blindfolded and sighted locomotion: effects of a concurrent task and locomotion paths. , 1981, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[13]  H. Mittelstaedt,et al.  Homing by path integration in a mammal , 1980, Naturwissenschaften.

[14]  Kenneth P. Able,et al.  5 – Mechanisms of Orientation, Navigation, and Homing* , 1980 .

[15]  R. Klatzky,et al.  Acquisition of route and survey knowledge in the absence of vision. , 1990, Journal of motor behavior.

[16]  E. Strelow.  What is needed for a theory of mobility: direct perception and cognitive maps--lessons from the blind. , 1985, Psychological review.

[17]  E. Menzel.  Chimpanzee Spatial Memory Organization , 1973, Science.

[18]  T.W. Lezniak,et al.  A dead reckoning/map correlation system for automatic vehicle tracking , 1977, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[19]  Robin Baker,et al.  Human navigation and the sixth sense , 1981 .

[20]  A. Siegel,et al.  The development of spatial representations of large-scale environments. , 1975, Advances in child development and behavior.

[21]  C. Thinus-Blanc,et al.  Cognitive Processes and Spatial Orientation in Animal and Man , 1987 .

[22]  P. Worchel,et al.  Space Perception and Orientation by the Blind , 1951 .