WASHINGTON (ANI) -- A future generation of anti-aircraft missiles will mimic a strategy called motion camouflage, which predatory insects use to trick prey into thinking they are stationary.

According to a report in NewScientist, the long been suspected fact that male dragonflies and other flying insects use this technique during aerial battles, has recently been confirmed.

Akiko Mizutani and Mandayam Srinivasan of the Australian National University in Canberra used two video cameras to track duelling dragonflies and worked out the trajectories they used on attack runs. They found that they do indeed adjust their flight paths to appear stationary, says the report.

Anderson and McOwan compared the performance of motion camouflage missiles with intercept missiles and heat-seeking missiles. The researchers trained their neural network by feeding it data extracted from a video of hoverflies chasing their prey. In successive runs, the program was adjusted to make it better and better at following the correct path. "It's basically a tuning process," says McOwan.

McOwan says that the British Ministry of Defence has expressed an interest in the technology. It might also be used in computer games. "Game makers might be interested in it as a strategy to allow software agents to sneak up on players," he suggests.

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