Navigation in cluttered environments is an important challenge for animals and robots alike

and has been the subject of many studies trying to explain and mimic animal navigational

abilities. However, the question of selecting an appropriate home location has, so far,

received only little attention. This is surprising, since the choice of a home location might

greatly influence an animal’s navigation performance. To address the question of home

choice in cluttered environments, a systematic analysis of homing trajectories was per-

formed by computer simulations using a skyline-based local homing method. Our analysis

reveals that homing performance strongly depends on the location of the home in the envi-

ronment. Furthermore, it appears that by assessing homing success in the immediate vicin-

ity of the home, an animal might be able to predict its overall success in returning to it from

within a much larger area.