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Locusts Watching Star Wars
lewko writes: "Scientists
discovered that locusts have a large nerve cell in their brains known as the Giant Lobular Movement Detector. This is what allows them to fly in swarms by the thousand without banging into each other. To monitor the brain signals, the researchers designed plasticine restraints for the insects and put them in front of an edited version of Star Wars which shows battle sequences. "Essentially, we made little armchairs for them and stuck them in front of TV screens," said Dr Rind. Of course this doesn't seem to stop them going bammo into my windshield... Or maybe that's just the depressed ones?"
Amusing. Very amusing. Next we will have small planes bouncing off our windshield insead of locusts ;)
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Collision detection for cars based on this is a leap in the wrong direction. Now aeroplanes, or hellicopters would be a better application. The little buggers are already wired for flying in swarms, what do we do that mimics this sort of behavior? Fighter jet formations in dog fights? Air traffic control? Image planes that could automatically hold a tight patern above an airport, without running into eachother (just because the pilot couldn't see the other plane).
Mental note: Researchers always have to relate every neat phenomenon to some never-going-to-be-practical use (i.e. prevent car accidents) in order to recieve $$$$$ from the industry.
Like implementing a bare-bone artificial version of the Giant Lobular Movement Detector into a car's steering control to avoid colliding into objects in motion at high speed? Do you think the GLMD is processing multiple-vector calculus formulas to determine the physical point of collision and then avoid it? Or that it just has a real effective way of figuring how to avoid objects in motion? Whose operating principles could also be applied to aircraft, robots in the home, etc.?
Actually these claims are made with hopes to recieve $$$$$ from the industry, but the industry is too smart to fall for it.
I'm glad these scientists are pissing away money in this manner. And I'm glad they're smarter than you.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
"Essentially, we made little armchairs for them and stuck them in front of TV screens," said Dr Rind.
Damn. You'd think these scientists would have better things to do than make cochroaches comfortable and entertain them.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Transformed into couch potatoes, when the locusts were shown footage of a Empire fighter or Millennium Falcon hurtling towards the camera they sent out brain signals via their detectors to swoop away from the danger.
With scientists at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich, the research team has designed an electronic circuit to mimic the locust's behaviour. It has already been fitted to a small robot and made to avoid collisions.
The result of this is that when your car detects a locust on a collision course with itself, it will suddenly swerve off the road, or even better, into the 18 wheeler in the next lane.