GPS has completely transformed how we get around. But other animals have long had their navigation systems built right in. Like ants, and bees.
全球定位系统已经完全改变了我们的出行方式。但其他动物早就把它们的导航系统建在里面了。比如蚂蚁和蜜蜂。
"We know their eyes are quite sensitive to polarized light, and the sky has a particular pattern of polarized light relative to the position of the sun." said Barbara Webb, a bioroboticist at the University of Edinburgh.
“我们知道他们的眼睛对偏振光非常敏感，天空中相对于太阳的位置有一种特定的偏振光模式”，爱丁堡大学的生物机器人学家芭芭拉·韦伯说。
You can see polarized light firsthand if you take a pair of polarized sunglasses and rotate them against the sky—the light passing through the lenses changes. Webb says the insects have polarization built into facets of their compound eyes.
你可以直接看到偏振光-如果你拿着一副偏振光太阳镜，然后把它们旋转到天空上-穿过镜片的光线就会改变。韦布说，这种昆虫在复眼的侧面形成了两极分化。
"You can think of it as the equivalent of having a little polarization directional filter over them, or lots of sunglasses pointed in different directions."
你可以把它看作是在它们上面有一个小的偏振方向滤波器，或者很多太阳镜指向不同的方向。
But Webb was curious whether there's really enough information in the sky to give insects an accurate sense of direction. So her team built a sensor modeled after a desert ant eye, and put it under artificial light meant to simulate the sky. They then fed that sensor input into a computational model meant to mimic the brains of desert ants, crickets, and other insects with a celestial compass.
但是韦伯很好奇天空中是否真的有足够的信息给昆虫一个准确的方向感。因此，她的团队制作了一个模拟沙漠蚂蚁眼睛的传感器，并将其置于模拟天空的人造光下。然后，他们将这种传感器输入到一个计算模型中，该模型的目的是用一个天罗盘模拟沙漠蚂蚁、蟋蟀和其他昆虫的大脑。
And they found that, with the insects' innate sensing and processing equipment, they can likely sense compass direction down to just a couple degrees' of error. The results are in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.
他们发现，利用昆虫天生的感知和处理设备，他们很可能会感知到指南针的方向下降到只有几度的误差。研究结果发表在PLOS计算生物学杂志上。
A system based on that of insects could someday be a cheap, low-energy alternative to GPS. Insects have very tiny brains. A brain the size of a pinhead that's using hardly any energy. And yet they're still able to navigate better than we can with GPS, which is a huge infrastructure.
一种基于昆虫的系统有一天会成为gps的廉价低能替代品。昆虫的大脑很小。一个针头大小的大脑，几乎不需要任何能量。然而，他们仍然能够比我们更好地导航GPS，这是一个庞大的基础设施。
Webb is now working on building a robot that can, like the desert ant, use light to get its bearings. Although after sundown it may have to ask for directions.
韦伯现在正致力于制造一种机器人，它可以像沙漠蚂蚁一样，用光来获得它的方位。虽然日落后，它可能需要问路。