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Inside the Tuna Can
blackcoot writes "Now folks walking through MIT's Infinite Corridor get to play with the virtual fishies (they react based on sensor data). I don't know if this will end up looking much nicer than the fish tank that used to come with MS Plus back in the day, but anything that requires months of computation to calculate just the raw data is cool in my book."
However, I agree with your criticism of the students themselves
"Fish create vortices, which are like teeny whirlpools," she said. "And the vortices create changes in water pressure that move the fish forward. That's what makes fish so cool."
Sounds sort of like the village idiot speaking.
That's what makes fish so cool? Uber-l33t fish. What next?
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Yeah, but according to the article it's a $30k grant from Microsoft Research/MIT iCampus. I wonder how much the MIT contribution is? The article also says that they're trying to get the displays (~$16k worth, according to them) donated, which does seems feasible, so it's chicken feed really.
Unquestionably animal movement is more sophisticated than any currently available mechanical movement or propulsion systems. Its debatable though how useful mimicing this sort of movement is in real world vehicles would be.
Take aircraft for example. They are faster but less agile than birds. In transport terms though we really only want them to fly in straight lines from A to B so agility is not an overwhelming consideration in their construction. If we want them to be more efficient we make them lighter and more aerodynamic.
Undoubtably there are niche requirements that will benefit from this sort of research but I doubt the ability to product ships that move like fish (my god think of the sea sickness from the motion of the waves AND the ship itself) will revolutionize transport.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Anonymous, Homophobic.. look whos talking "in fact".
moo
I know no facts, this is conjecture: They say the project is funded by Microsoft, which is only a fraction of the story. I'd guess there are a couple of people working on this project, and a hell of a lot of computer time. Figure $100-200k per person (includes pay, tuition, university claimed overhead, etc). Figure $50-100k for the computers or computer time (including costs for administrator?). Microsoft's contribution is nothing, and in reality is probably "market value of zero cost donated software", with a possible condition or expectation that the pretty fish tanks have prettier butterflies pasted onto the corners. That said, the project is real cool, and does have scientific merit in my opinion, as the goal is modeling the actual movement mechanism of fish in a virtual 3-D tank. The added benefit is the projection to 2-D on the corridor walls. And by the way, we're talking a very small section of the corridor, right?
The need for all those massive calculations has been under debate within the robot builders community for some time.
By using simple analog components from transistor radios and similar hardware, some robotic engineers have built robots that learn on their own 'how' to walk. The movements are never pre-programmed, the robot is just given a simple goal like 'move foreward'. It is then up to the robot to 'learn' what actions best meet that goal.
Seems like this technology applied to Robotuna would be a no-brainer. I wonder if they have considered this approach.
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
iCampus is an affiliation between MIT and Microsoft, but Microsoft provides the funding. Microsoft will supply up to $30,000 for each approved project. The project can still get outside funding, but most of the projects I've seen or read about haven't needed to (most don't even need the fully $30K). Check out http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/projects/icampus/index .html.
There's a small computer lab just of the infinate that has an electronic (not Simplex) pushbutton lock. It has a large floor-to-cieling set of windows and is affectionately called the "fishbowl" due to your abilty to observe the students in the lab from the Infinate Corridor. My guess is that they'll either make a sturdy display case or put it inside the fish bowl, facing outwards. MIT students also have better things to do that mindlessly destroy MIT property. Occasionally they accidently ruin some alarm sensor they were trying to bypass, but vandalism is pretty rare and theft is somewhat rare.
Breaking and entering with intent to create something creaive and easily removable is about the most the average MIT student is willing to risk getting kicked out of MIT for.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
An engineering professor at UC Berkeley created a project that uses video cameras to track the position of fish in a tank, then a projector projects onto a nearby wall what the view looks like from one of the fish.
Pretty slick combination of engineering and art.
Things have improved since those days. Check out some screenshots of Matrox's reef demo by scrolling to the bottom of this page. There's instructions there to get it working with other video cards.
Anything that propels itself through water creates vortices - it's unavoidable. With propellers, the vortices create drag. With fish, the vorticies create thrust. So fish are more efficient swimmers than propellers. That's what makes them cool.
Did anyone else notice the bit that states that it will cost 'em $16,000 for enough 5ft X 2.5ft flat panels to cover all of the surfaces in a 1/6 mile corridor? That sounds absurdly cheap for flat panels of that size.