Research Bits is an occasional roundup of technology research. This week’s topics deal with digital ants, seeing the world from an animal’s point of view, and collages of the future.
Ants: an Inspiration
Ants. We’ve watched them march around their eponymous farms, we’ve seen them finish our picnic leftovers, and we’ve had them crawl up our pant legs. Now they are being used by researchers at Wake Forest University as inspiration for a new tool that fights computer worms and viruses, The Daily Telegraph reports.
After watching the actual insects fight off interlopers using “swarming intelligence,” a team of software-security developers at the university created their own “digital ants” (not to be confused with computer-animated film Antz).
In this program, a digital ant that detects a software bug will alert his compatriots for reinforcement, just like when the real critters find a lollipop or a pugnacious praying mantis. The idea, researchers say, is to create a fast-acting system that can take out potential computer viruses and quickly return to normal functions once the threats have been neutralized.
The World Through Their Eyes
Researchers at Texas A&M University want to give you a new perspective on the world: an animal’s perspective. A team of professors at the university has created a virtual environment that allows humans to experience sights and sounds from an animal’s point of view, according to Texas A&M’s division of markerting and communications.
With 3-D glasses, a semicircle of screens, surround sound, and a Wii video-game controller, users can experience the ultraviolet vision of a bird or the ultrasonic hearing of a whale, while navigating through a virtual world.
The creators hope that the simulation—called “I’m Not There” (not to be confused with the Bob Dylan biopic)—is to alter the way museums teach about the natural world. Or, as Carol LaFayette, who leads the team from the visualization department in Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, calls it in a press release, “the end of taxidermy.”
The Future of Collages
Can’t draw anything more complicated than stick figures and seemingly shapeless blobs, but want to create realistic visualizations? Well, researchers from Tsinghua University, in China, and the National University of Singapore have just the product for you, Tsinghua University reports.
The product, called “Sketch2Photo,” allows users to draw and label a rudimentary sketch and have it turned into a photo montage using pictures combed from the Internet. If you want an image of a cow jumping over the moon with an open-mouthed crocodile waiting on the other side, this product can help.
If you draw and label your picture, the product will trawl the Internet in search of images that best fit the shape of your design and the labels of your blobs. Examples on their site include a dirt biker being chased by a cheetah in the desert, and a sheep and a cow grazing in harmony in an open field.
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