Edge encoding mechanisms in Musca domestica

Musca domestica, the common house fly, has a simple yet powerful and accessible vision system. Cajal indicated in 1885 the vision system is the same as in the human retina [1]. We have modeled the intracellular connections of the vision system and have applied high resolution images to the model. Even though the animal does not have what we would consider a high resolution imaging system, it is still capable of high resolution and we are using the same processing principles to extract high resolution information from the visual input. In this paper we will discuss how we are using a purely local process from a single cartridge within the vision system to encode edge information: magnitude, orientation, displacement, and tilt. We also investigate a cooperative approach to link cartridges that have common numerical features in their field of view to share their information for potential edge connection and feature extraction.