required reading:
Olberg RM, Worthington AH, Venator KR (2000) Prey pursuit and interception in dragonflies. J Comp Physiol A 186:155-162.
pdf-file

Questions:
What is visual tracking?
Why is it apparently easier than interception? (Fig. 1)
What is the principal way of calculating an interception course?
Which parameters would you (or a computer) need to know?
Does the dragonfly know these parameters?
How does the dragonfly intercept prey?
What are translational head movements?
How might head movements support interception?
Are they used by the dragonfly?
How can a dragonfly calculate the speed and distance of items of different size (fly vs. bird)? (Fig. 6)
How does a hoverfly male judge the distance of a female?
Why does angle FE change less than FA? (Fig. 3, 4)
The latency between the prey's turn and the dragonfly's path correction is ca.33-50 ms. Is this slow? Fast? Why? What happens during this time?

required reading:
Frye MA, Olberg RM (1995) Visual receptive field properties of feature detecting neurons in the dragonfly. J Comp Physiol 177:569-576.
pdf-file

Questions:
What are large-field & small-field Descending Neurons in this paper?
Do these terms refer to the receptive fields? What are the general functions of 'small-field' and of 'large field' feature detectors?
Describe the recording and stimulation techniques (Fig. 1, 2) What are the principal differences of the Target Specific DN's response properties (Fig. 3)?
Is there any correlation between preferred stimulus size and receptive field size or location (Fig. 3, 5)?
Do receptive fields and dendritic fields coincide? (Fig. 3) Variation among preparations?
Why is it likely that TSDNs control flight during prey pursuit?
Could a single TSDN code the position of a prey item?

Powerpoint slides (pdf-file)

Links:
North American Dragonflies
Digital Dragonflies Site
Drosophila flight simulator
Visionary
flying robot