Home▸Entomology & Insect Behaviour▸Bee Path Integration & Navigation Learning Simulator

Bee Path Integration & Navigation Learning

Interactive path-integration simulator: a foraging honey bee accumulates a home vector as it wanders in search of food, then flies straight home along that vector instead of retracing its route — with sensor noise and a round-over-round learning curve.

Entomology & Insect Behaviour3DModerate60 FPS

Details

CategoryEntomology & Insect Behaviour

RenderingThree.js · WebGL

DifficultyModerate

Target FPS60

ControlsFlight speed slider (0.8-4 m/s); sensor noise slider (0-1) sets how imprecise each integration step's heading/distance reading is; 'Fly to forage' releases the bee on a meandering outbound search that lays down a visible trail while the home vector accumulates live; 'Fly home' (enabled once food is found) sends the bee in a straight line along the integrated vector, ignoring the outbound route; 'New round' resets for another trip and appends the round's return error to the on-panel learning-curve bar chart, with round-over-round noise reduction modelling learning.

Three.jspath integrationdead reckoninginsect navigationassociative learningentomology

📖 Read the articleThe maths behind Bee Path Integration & Navigation Learning Simulator

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Watch a single foraging honey bee build a home vector from scratch as it searches for food, then use that vector — not its memory of the outbound route — to fly straight back to the hive. Sensor noise controls how much dead-reckoning error creeps in, and the learning curve tracks how homing accuracy improves as the bee repeats the trip.

⚙ Under the hood

A single foraging honey bee wanders in search of food while continuously integrating a home vector from every heading and distance step it takes. Send it home along that straight-line vector instead of retracing its route, and watch return accuracy improve round over round as sensor noise and dead-reckoning error are tuned.

Three.jspath integrationdead reckoninginsect navigationassociative learningentomology

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install