Effective visuomotor coordination is a necessary requirement for the survival of many terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial animal species. We studied the kinematics of aerial pursuit in the blowfly Lucilia sericata using an actuated dummy as target for freely flying males. We found that the flies perform target tracking in the horizontal plane and target interception in the vertical plane. Our behavioural data suggest that the flies’ trajectory changes are a controlled combination of target heading angle and of the rate of change of the bearing angle. We implemented control laws in kinematic models and found that the contributions of proportional navigation strategy are negligible. We concluded that the difference between horizontal and vertical control relates to the difference in target heading angle the fly keeps constant: 0° in azimuth and 23° in elevation. Our work suggests that male Lucilia control both horizontal and vertical steerings by employing proportional controllers to the error angles. In horizontal plane, this controller operates at time delays as small as 10 ms, the fastest steering response observed in any flying animal, so far.

有效的视觉运动协调是许多陆生，水生和空中动物物种生存的必要条件。我们研究了蝇fly Lucilia sericata中的空中追踪运动学使用致动的假人作为自由飞翔的雄性的目标。我们发现苍蝇在水平面上执行目标跟踪，在垂直面上执行目标拦截。我们的行为数据表明，苍蝇的轨迹变化是目标航向角和方位角变化率的受控组合。我们在运动学模型中实施了控制律，发现比例导航策略的贡献可忽略不计。我们得出的结论是，水平和垂直控制之间的差异与飞行保持恒定的目标航向角的差异有关：方位角为0°，仰角为23°。我们的工作表明，男性露西莉亚通过对误差角采用比例控制器来控制水平和垂直转向。在水平面中，该控制器的延时小至10 ms，这是迄今为止在任何飞行动物中观察到的最快的转向响应。