Behavior in the lab and in the field

InsectBall

Striatech's InsectBall, developed by Hansjürgen Dahmen at the University of Tübingen, is an air-cushioned treadmill with robust design. It is light-weight and portable. It can be used indoors in the lab, but just as easily in the field. This allows studying insect navigation and locomotion in their natural habitat.

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Visual navigation

Path integration
Navigation by landmarks and visual cuew
Complex environments
Dynamic behavior of running insects
Principles of locomotion

E-phys recordings

Neurophysiology of spatial memory
Neural mechanisms of insect navigation

Homing behavior

Visual cues
Goal directed navigation
Navigation in the natural environment
Navigation in a virtual reality

Optic flow

Information in the optic flow
Motion vector fields
Flux fields for proper motion
Estimated tasks

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Natural locomotion

Extremely light-weight Styrofoam ball allows the animal to perform locomotion with natural acceleration, deceleration and orienting. Improved tethering allows natural posture and full degree of motion.

Robust hardware, flexible use

Easy to transport, easy to set up: use in the natural habitat of your research model.

For different species

Different sizes available for different research organisms: Drosophila, desert ants, bull ants, bees, cockroaches, locusts, etc.

Open- or closed-loop

Open-loop: Animal orientation is fixed, its rotation is reflected as rotation of the ball. Can be combined with equipment like air puffs, olfactory cues, visual stimuli, simultaneous physiological recordings, etc.
Closed-loop: The animal can freely rotate around its yaw axis, and react in a natural way to environmental cues.

Trackball

Material

Hollow Styrofoam ball

Size

Adjusted to experimental animal. Smallest version: diameter 5 cm, weight: 0.2 g

Inertia

Mass and moment of inertia of trackball is adapted to animal, such that the animal has to exert the same force to move the floating ball as to walk normally

Motion recording

Sensors

Two optical sensors

Data rate

250 Hz

Frame Hardware

Ball cup

Precision engineered for smooth motion

Construction

Sturdy and portable

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The light-weight and robust InsectBall can be set up in the animals natural habitat. Seen here is a Cataglyphis desert ants.
Image taken from Dahmen et al, JEB 2017

Degrees of freedom of animal movement. Animal is tethered on a stick that can move vertically, which is important to ensure natural locomotion.
Image taken from Dahmen et al, JEB 2017

Ant carrying food, performing homing behavior on the InsectBall.