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Using Distributed Wetware To Analyze Mars Craters

Posted by timothy on from the how'dju-like-a-beowulf-cluster-of-these? dept.

A non-mouse Cow Herd writes: "Here's an interesting NASA project that popped up on sci.space.sience a while back: This site allows volunteers to classify craters on mars, essentially a human distributed image processing program. They are even starting a moderation-like quality rating. So what do you think ? Would you devote your spare cycles to this ? Will the get quality work or just a lot of First Posts ?" Seems almost (but not quite) paradoxical to use an ultra-high-tech infrastructure to organize non-automated piecework, but until there's a sand mouse for crater-recognition, it seems like a really smart idea.

51 comments

  1. Probably was a good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Right up until it got posted to slashdot.

    1. Re:Probably was a good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There's a mirror here

  2. this stuff is good by SouperMike · · Score: 1

    hey if open source projects work, why won't this? i mean, volunteerism can have its downfalls, but i think this could be worthwhile... unless we find some mischievous contributors.

  3. WOOHOO! by Have+Blue · · Score: 1

    I got First Martian! WOO!

  4. Automate it by strlen · · Score: 1

    I say automate the process. Image recognition is possible with software. Then we can create a team slashdot and see who scores the largest amount of craters :-)

  5. In response to the byline: by ca1v1n · · Score: 1

    If I get a beowulf cluster of wetware, do I get to determine the gender/clothing, and can I decide just how "wet" each unit should be?

    /me waits for the Natalie Portman trolls to respond...

    --
    WARNING: there is a trojan on your
  6. Scientic for a change. by DanThe1Man · · Score: 1

    At least its not PhedoScience like Seti@home.

  7. There is already a distributed project like this.. by tinikkel · · Score: 5
    it's located at http://charlz.dynip.com/gutenberg/

    You proofread OCR'd text for Project Gutenberg using the raw scanned image to fix anything. You can do as little or as much as you want.

  8. I can see an opportunity for abuse! by Spazntwich · · Score: 3

    *(L)user 1* Hey! That's a crater!
    *(L)user 2* Cool! Which one?
    *(L)user 1* Nevermind, it's just a picture of your mom! (Or other filthy object.

    Seriously, using PEOPLE to do anything that requires more than clicking and flaming? I don't know if this project is gonna work.
    ---

    1. Re:I can see an opportunity for abuse! by Krilomir · · Score: 2
      Seriously, using PEOPLE to do anything that requires more than clicking and flaming? I don't know if this project is gonna work.

      If people can moderate on slashdot, why shouldn't they be able to do something like this as well?

    2. Re:I can see an opportunity for abuse! by Zebbers · · Score: 1

      That's the point. Change the can to a cant and the shouldnt to a should.

  9. been done by Soong · · Score: 5

    but with people. this is just www.amihotornot.com for craters.

    --
    Start Running Better Polls
  10. The system needs more redundancy by gradbert · · Score: 2

    right now they only have one person looking at each crater. This can and will lead to some errors in clasification. Now im gussing that right now they have more than enough craters to keep every one busy, but if they had enough ppl , they what they should do is have a system where every crater gets look at by several people. Craters that get unanimos votes by the first 3 veiwers wont be resent, but those that don't will keep getting sent to new people until there is enough certainy in the classification. also if you do things this way, you can start rating the classifiers by how often they agree or disagree with the majority opinion. this will also protect against malicious classifiers who intentionally do things wrong

  11. Reliability by karzan · · Score: 1

    Does anyone else question the reliability of a system where the best way to improve performance is to get posted on Slashdot? ("All of a sudden we're operating at 100% of capacity!")

  12. no scientific value to this? by intuition · · Score: 2


    I think its kind of insulting to be handing out work to volunteers that has no scientific value (see FAQ quote at end of my post) other than determining in this specific context, "the public is ready willing and able to help science." Even if this study proves that the public can help NASA out - how does it prove that the public will help in the future? Furthermore, couldn't they find something more worthwhile for volunteers to do, and still use that experience to determine if the public can help out.

    I find a similar problem often when I volunteer to help various organizations in and around my community, I am assigned some menial task or there is no important work to be done. (i.e. It would have been better for me to work an extra hour and donate the money I would of made to the organization, so they could hire someone for at least 5 hours of menial work) Even worse, a lot of times they might make me do something in a ridiculously inefficient manner. In other words if I used my "geek" background and somehow implement a computer or what have you - the task would be accomplished much more efficiently. If that's awkwardly put sorry, but I am sure the /. community will understand.

    Sorry about this ranting, but I just had to vent. Don't get me wrong, sometimes volunteer work can be very worthwhile, but it seems more often than not - it isn't.

    From the FAQ :

    Q. What scientific questions can be answered by the data that we clickworkers are providing?

    A. The first stage of this pilot project is only trying to answer some meta-science questions:

    Is the public ready, willing, and able to help science?
    Does this new way of powering science analysis produce just as good results as the traditional way?
    So, at first, we will not be breaking new ground, just reprocessing Mars images that have already been analyzed.

    1. Re:no scientific value to this? by Ektanoor · · Score: 2

      "I think its kind of insulting to be handing out work to volunteers that has no scientific value"

      Frankly if properly analysed, this work will DO have some scientific value. Science is not an activity for dusty shelves and old professors in glasses 1cm. thick. Anyway, some of these guys do also present very uniscientific ideas about our Universe. Let's start by the statement that Mars is, somehow, a second Moon. It was realtively stupid but now it is a sceintific enormity to state such. However many hot heads come up, drop 80% of evidence of not being worth for a glance and write the most stupid History of Mars nayone has ever heard.

      On the other side. How do you want people to get more acquainted with Science. Teaching them long lessons without practice? Well, this method is dangerous, but in time it may teach people on how to deal with Science. And every beginner has a right to be wrong. I would say this is good but unsufficient. Craters are not only those that you may see at first glance. Mars has a very complex History of craterization.

    2. Re:no scientific value to this? by orac2 · · Score: 2
      If they intend to use this for real survey analysis, they have to test (test: see scientific method) whether or not it works and get a sense for the error range. In other words, determine the accuracy and precision (two different things) of their system before using it on a real problem. Otherwise results from it are useless scientifically. I'm sorry good science doesn't instantly gratify you, but this work doeshave scientific value right now.

      --
      "Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
    3. Re:no scientific value to this? by intuition · · Score: 1
      "Frankly if properly analysed, this work will DO have some scientific value."

      Read the FAQ, they are stating that it won't DO have some scientific value. :P

      "Science is not an activity for dusty shelves and old professors in glasses 1cm. thick"

      Where did I imply that it was?

      As for the rest of your post, I couldn't understand what your point is, could you please clarify? I have no idea what your metaphor comparing mars to a once thought of moon is getting at. Nor can I fathom how teaching without practice relates to my post.

      And thank you for informing me that Mars has a complex history of craterization.

    4. Re:no scientific value to this? by Ektanoor · · Score: 2

      If you had properly read their site then you will see that these analysis will be submitted to review. Maybe I wasn't too clear so:
      Frankly if properly analysed by a community of researchers, this work will DO have some scientific value.

      On the rest, if you don't get a hint about the story of Moon and Mars, go to those dusty shelves and get some historical knowledge, at least. And don't speak about Science before doing this. And BESIDES I am not talking of metaphors but of a theory that some old thinkers try to keep alive. Sometimes in very UNSCIENTIFIC ways.

    5. Re:no scientific value to this? by intuition · · Score: 1

      I did not claim that the study wouldn't have scientific value, simply that the researchers themselves claimed that the volunteer work would have no scientific value. I was commenting on that. It would be like me asking you to volunteer for the feed the hungry association, but then tell you your volunteer work will consist of moving rocks, and that it will in no way help hungry people.

      Secondly, the more I read this - and look at how much work was put into the website - it sounds like this is just some low level NASA guy who is supposed to catalogue craters all day in a basement of some NASA building, who want's to pawn his work off on "volunteers" from the internet.

      Or maybe not.

  13. Very interesting but not enough by Ektanoor · · Score: 3

    The palimpsest craters and the nearly wiped craters are some of the most important for age classification. This allows to provide a real picture of the age of Mars landscape. Recently some other things came into the game, the "crater-deformed" landscape. Structures, mainly in sedimented regions, that still retain traces of anciant craterization. These ones are the most hard to detect. Only the circular deposition of sediments, and some deformations on soil still show that we are in presence of craters.

    All these ones can only be find through image processing. And oh my! Here the work is HUGE. Image processment allows mostly to remark the details of landscape. And we are not looking for craters in the right place but exactly in very wrong places. A wiped out crater in a edge of a cliff will give you a hint on how old such cliff is. Another crater in a sedimentary region will show how long sediments covered the landscape. And there is no common law to ease this task.

    Meanwhile this classification is not bad at all. However I doubt that NASA will get any good on it. They are too stuck to their ideas of old dry Mars check a few things about ages. For example, I wondered how old they would call such crater like the pedestal crater in Janssen's Crater. At the beginning I thought that the thing was a "post-water" crater. In fact the study of very small craters showed that the thing hit Janssen's while still a sea. And it kept being such for much longer. The signature of small, nearly wiped and mostly invisible craters showed a very long period for the presence of water. An that Janssen still holds a lot of its morphology of that period.

    Btw. Till now, water runs from a few places there. It oesn't live too long in the surface but it is there, underground, in the millions of liters.

    1. Re:Very interesting but not enough by SnowZero · · Score: 1

      > All these ones can only be find through image processing.

      Hence the use of the most advanced vision system available to modern science: Humans.

      As someone who has worked on computer vision systems I can assure you that computers are very slow and not very good when it comes to computer vision tasks like this. Maybe in 20 years there will be some competition. They'll also have a very nice dataset to train/test new algorithms against: The data NASA is collecting now using humans.

    2. Re:Very interesting but not enough by Ektanoor · · Score: 2

      No, not even the human eye is advanced enough to see these things. First these craters are small. Sometimes there is a need to enalrge the image to get a better picture to analyse. Second, these images are shadows of gray. The latest MOC images have 256 gradations of it. But the human eye can generally see 32 of them. A more trained one may see a little more, but I heard that there is a limit that no one can see above 60 gradations. So you have to apply colorization or sharp the image or to use other tools to rise the perception of the picture. Sometimes, these tools are confusing. You get artifacts features caused either by the filter you use, noise, camera limitations, bad lighting conditions or everything together.

      Besides these craters are horribly unnoticeable. One caught me in the 4th day of checking one and the same place. It was so wiped out, that only the disturbance of sedimentary layers in the place, showed me the possibility of its presence. And only after superenhancing the image, taking a damn care to avoid artifact creation, I managed to see it in full.

      So you see, not one system or the other are perfect. Both are more perfect than being single used...

  14. I thought the answer was known by Vassily+Overveight · · Score: 4
    From the FAQ :


    Q. What scientific questions can be answered by the data that we clickworkers are providing?

    A. The first stage of this pilot project is only trying to answer some meta-science questions:


    Is the public ready, willing, and able to help science?

    Many years ago, volunteers (mostly housewives) were enlisted to help analyze thousands of photos of cloud-chamber tracings. Scientists were looking for evidence of a particular particle, and in those days only human inspection could be used. To make sure that the volunteers would find the trace if it showed up, photos with phoney traces were periodically inserted. As I recall, the program was considered a success. It seems to me that the question has been answered. And I would also think that a similar process of inserting known items to make sure the volunteers are doing a proper job could be used.

    --

    "If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine

  15. Scientist's union opinion, anyone? by mdb31 · · Score: 1
    Hmm, wonder what the scientist's union would have to say about this. I mean: outsource labor to unpaid Internet volonteers, eliminating valuable NASA positions for junior scientists? I know classifying craters for a few months is the most menial and possibly boring work imaginable, but programs like this might cause many graduates *not* to get valuable working experience in a scientific organisation

    I might be wrong about all this, but I still don't have a good feeling about projects like these...

    1. Re:Scientist's union opinion, anyone? by Peter+Dyck · · Score: 1
      This does not eliminate the need for junior scientists as the task is hardly a scientific one.

      There's a lot of menial and boring work in the science that suits perfectly well to people with no training at all. Getting rid of that just gives more time for the junior scientists to get acquainted with more demanding parts of their work.

    2. Re:Scientist's union opinion, anyone? by mdb31 · · Score: 1

      You miss my point: even menial tasks at least expose people to a Real Scientific Environment, etc. etc. Circling craters at NASA during college might very well get you some valuable contacts/ideas/etc. as a beginning scientist. If that work is farmed out to Internet volunteers, that aspect is pretty much lost

    3. Re:Scientist's union opinion, anyone? by Peter+Dyck · · Score: 1

      When I was a beginning scientist I had to carry out stupid tasks like scanning old plotter charts into a computer and use a program that translated the bitmap image into an X-Y data set. This NASA job sounds exactly like that: mechanical, boring as hell and won't teach you anything. You just sit in a cubicle, scanning and running some program.

    4. Re:Scientist's union opinion, anyone? by Ektanoor · · Score: 1

      1) Unions... Unions? UNIONS????? GET ME THAT BFG9000!!!!
      I'm not a boss. I'm more inclined for a damn commy. But Unions? Damn Hell with these Unions. Pay the tax and see guys drinking and your salary shrinking...

      2) You miss one point. Workers with less scientific preparation are sometimes a good thing to pick. These people are still out of stereotypes and some erroneous visions yu may have get during your life. I once saw children, picking up Mars raw frames and pointing to things I couldn't see. I saw people without any knowledge about Geology but having knowledge in a field like archeology pointing to very WEIRD things in Mars. I don't wanna state we have aliens there. But I do tell you that are quite wierd things in Mars...

  16. Hmmm, I know what would be cool by ckedge · · Score: 1

    Ahhh yes, to be the first human being to visually examine a spot, any spot, on Mars.

    Only a few things better than that. Namely, being there.

    1. Re:Hmmm, I know what would be cool by kilonad · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure Malin Space Science Systems, the ones who put the camera on Mars Global Surveyor, already examine each picture and write a short description of it. I say this, having downloaded hundreds of narrow-angle camera images of the Iapygia region (270W-300W, 30S-0N. quadrangle MC-21) and seeing comments on a lot of their pages. So odds are you're not the first person to examine that spot, and I guarantee you're not if it's in the Iapygia region. ;)

  17. oh well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Will the get quality work or just a lot of First Posts ?

    Well, they would have gotten quality work, if this hadn't been posted to Slashdot.

  18. slightly off topic: a way to count ballots? by Dr.+Awktagon · · Score: 1

    Seeing those hand recounts in Florida made me wonder if there would be some way to distribute the disputed ballots so that hundreds of people would "vote" on each one to arrive at a decision. Maybe if they could've distributed digitally signed image of each ballots.

    Is there a digital technology to do this? I think I read once that Bruce Schneier(sp) had a system that worked this way by passing signed votes around between voters.

    Just wondering..

  19. Real uses of unskilled labor by Thalia · · Score: 3
    There are other projects organized by Open Mind that are designed to have non-skilled users teach computers character recognition and voice recognition. The handwriting recognition system is already on the Web. By using many individuals, the computer is taught to consistently recognize items.

    I think the NASA project is basically make-work. After all, after all of the users have added their time and energy, the results are thrown away. They're not used to teach computers to recognize craters in the next evolution.

    1. Re:Real uses of unskilled labor by Ektanoor · · Score: 2

      I think you are damn wrong. Yes it is real possible that some people, and including some jerks inside NASA (Hi!) will do try to throw away this work. But also they have thrown away tons of very scientific work away. Meanwhile there are other people who may care so this tthing will not treated this way.

    2. Re:Real uses of unskilled labor by mr_exit · · Score: 2

      If enough people do this then nasa will have to take notice. they have seen how much the seti @ home project has lifted the profile of seti. who even knew what it standed for before they started that.

      The webpage uses a VERY well made java (or something similar) applet that is a lot of fun to use. Congratulations to whoever at nasa thought up and built this.

      I have only been doing it for the last half hour but have already clicked up a hundred craters.
      I know what I'm doing all afternoon

      bats = bugs

      --

      -------
      Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
    3. Re:Real uses of unskilled labor by mr_exit · · Score: 1

      ok ok.
      its now 4 hours after i last started playing with this and I have seen and circled over 562 craters. even put up with a slashdotting or two (clicking reload every minute utill te page DID load)

      This is just a game for those intrested in space. why would people bother to look at nasa's slow loading images of mars when they can look at some varied and interesting images and feel like they are doing something semi useful at the same time.

      If anyone feels like continuing my good work for the afternoon click on http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/crater-marking?cl ickworker=13186001283783000&nocache=5826# and circle some more of them cute wee craters.

      we could even make click worker id 13186001283783000 team slashdot

      bats = bugs

      --

      -------
      Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
  20. The point by Ektanoor · · Score: 3

    You don't see the point here? Crater classification is needed to create the historical map of Mars. Till now many analysis are made in the "pick-frame" method. You pick several frames through some method of selection. You analyse them nd throw a conclusion. Good and Bad. In my experience I saw a few times when NASA splitted a very good one, confunding a landscape formation with other just by ignoring some frames.

    A systematic selection of craters will allow to form a more strightforward picture of the landscape. This work is massive. And computers, here, have several drawbacks to achieve this. Craters may have some common and well seen morphologies. But they also have a lot of individual traces that no computer will ever detect. Some of these traces can be quite confusing. For example a wiped out crater occurs to be more recent than its nearly preserved neighbor. Funny, but it does occur.

    Right now it is possible that this clickwork is quite raw. But still is the right step to go. We need that map. Or else we will keep seeing hordes of investigators claiming that this place is that old, no it is that new or it's an alien face...

  21. Pros and Cons by spineboy · · Score: 2

    This is a great idea! Many people have more than a passing interest in science and space - just look at the number of people on Slashdot and SETI@HOME. Projects like these have been done before with large numbers of participants (grade schoolers looking at plant genetics, people identifying and counting birds, etc) and have generally had good, robust results.
    Pros 1-large number of interested people - should be easy to get stats on whether everyonne agrees that this is a type A or B crater.
    2 the human eye/brain is by far the best pattern recognition tool ever seen - i.e facial differences are relatively minor, yet everyone looks different and is uniquely identifiable.
    3 interesting project - inexpensive too!
    4 Data is "blinded" to the judges - no one knows where these craters are, thus if alot of people see water effects in many craters in one area a reasonable conjecture can be made.

    Cons 1 possible high "noise" level (first post effect) - this can be defeated by introducing a training session which should weed out the first posters
    2 possible poor inter-observer correlation -always a more of a problem with complex or more judgemental analysis - I see this in orthopaedics when looking at x-rays of bone fractures. Simpler systems work best!

    --
    ..........FULL STOP.
  22. isthisacraterornot.com by meatspray · · Score: 1

    maybe you could submit your own images too ;P

    1. Re:isthisacraterornot.com by Ektanoor · · Score: 2

      Well why notto make YOUR site? In the eve of Internet there were lots of sites studying Mars images. Truly many cared for Mars Face and similar things. But there were others who went on hunting more things than just Fussy Faces. There were more scientific or less scientific sites. Many spoke about the history of Mars, the possibility of water, life or even our dear little green men.

      However this was all gone. By 95%. First because people either got tired or suffered some desillusions. Second because some pedestal people decided that this was too bad for their "Science". I got caught twice in this one. First by kicking me out of Yahoo. A year later, by smartly wipe out my presence in every main Web index. Some people were kicked out by getting so much hard flame and dirty spam that they got tired of fighting. Some got caught in a smart campaign of Mars bashing - "Elvis leaves the stage and Big Foot is in" as we saddly commented.

      So you may try to do your site. But be warned. Things are not so simple as they seem.

      Besides I have site on Internet. An horrible and primitive site. What i managed to do after the third time of being downed (this third one due to some damn sysadmin who knocked the server completely). But I will not tell where it is...

  23. From the NYT by The+Musician · · Score: 2
    Original source of this material:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/16/opinion/16DAVI.h tml

    --

  24. Netscape 6 by Deanasc · · Score: 1
    I don't want to help them bad enough to "upgrade" to Netscape 6. Perhaps if they chose a different browser I'd try it. I just don't trust what I've heard about Netscape 6.

    Netscape 6

    --
    I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
  25. NS6 required to mark craters? by jonallen · · Score: 1

    The NASA site states Netscape 6 is required to 'mark craters.'

    Well, I /was/ vaguely interested in this until I saw that. I'll stick to 4.51, thank you very much.

    --
    -- Jon Allen
  26. My wetware crashed! by ajs · · Score: 2
    I think I need more coffee for my wetware ;-)

    Seriously, I got:

    HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 01:40:26 GMT Server: CL-HTTP/70.23
    (Macintosh Common Lisp; 3.7.0) Connection: close Content-type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

    Internal Server Error

    File #P"Macintosh HD:Clickworkers static files:Database:Global-Variable:global-variable-chu nk-0001.tab" is busy or locked.

    CL-HTTP/70.23 (Macintosh Common Lisp; 3.7.0)

    1. Re:My wetware crashed! by wdavies · · Score: 1

      Heh,

      Poor little Mac, probably a Quadra.. :) I bet they had no idea it was gonna be slashdotted.

      Interesting that they are using Mac Common Lisp and the MIT Common Lisp HTTP Server though. Both are great pieces of software. MCL is my all time favourite development environment, and CL-HTTP is possibly the most useful piece of software ever written for it. Shame they didnt put any fire power behind it.

      Cheers,
      Winton

  27. Oops! My bad... by CurlyG · · Score: 1

    Service Unavailable

    This server is currently operating at capacity and cannot accept your request. Please try again later.
    CL-HTTP/70.23 (Macintosh Common Lisp; 3.7.0)

    --- and a few minutes later...

    HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 01:40:19 GMT Server: CL-HTTP/70.23 (Macintosh Common Lisp; 3.7.0) Connection: close Content-type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
    Internal Server Error

    File #P"Macintosh HD:Clickworkers static files:Database:Global-Variable:global-variable-chu nk-0001.tab" is busy or locked.
    CL-HTTP/70.23 (Macintosh Common Lisp; 3.7.0)

    --
    You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
  28. Vernor Vinge again! by AtrN · · Score: 1

    In Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" the same idea is expressed in a rather more brutal way. Rather than volunteering service the experts get en-slaved and plugged in as a service. Not such a bad idea if you ask me. And not that far from the truth when looking at various parts of USENET or some company's support operations :)

  29. no he didn't by Bandyopadhyay · · Score: 1
    Al Gore and Dubya are one and the same.

    chalk up another for the republicrats

    america has spoken.
    This time they ordered the shitburger with cheese and got the shitburger--no chese.

    --
    Stop saying Bandyopadhyay!
  30. Re:Reference? by John+Jorsett · · Score: 1

    I saw this too, quite long ago. Where I saw it was on a television show (maybe even as far back as Walter Cronkite's "The 21st Century". And yes, there really was such a show, not "The 20th Century" one that also ran. "The 21st Century" was shorter-lived and dealt with science and technology stories. One story was on playing this amazing 'space war' game using an oscilloscope driven by a huge mainframe computer at MIT.) It was probably at least 30 years ago. Perhaps a search for histories of particle physics would turn something up. And it's a dim memory now, but it could have been in England where it was taking place.

  31. Bring in the amateurs by pvanheus · · Score: 1
    I'm really rather surprised that this is being treated like a special case. After all, in astronomy, the work of amateurs has always been, and continues to be, a source of scientifically relevant data.

    Consider, for instance, the work of the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) and similar organisations worldwide. AAVSO co-ordinates the observation of thousands of variable stars, and relies very heavily on the labour of amateurs. Observers' data is checked against that of other observers, and over time observers get to do a better job, and also get to know how much they generally misjudge the magnitude of the stars they are observing.

    Other examples in astronomy abound - from the observation of sunspots to the timing of grazing occultations (when a star is occulted by the edge of the moon).

    This NASA project is simply using the Internet to set up something similar.

    Peter