German scientists have built a flight simulator for flies to better understand how the insects see and coordinate their movements. What they learn might be of use in developing robots that can move around their environment.

Photo courtesy USDA

"A fly's brain enables the unbelievable--the animal's easy negotiation of obstacles in rapid flight, split-second reaction to the hand that would catch it, and unerring navigation to the smelly delicacies it lives on," says Technische Universität München in a statement about the research.

"Researchers have long known that flies take in many more images per second than humans do. For human eyes, anything more than 25 discrete images per second will merge into a continuous movement. A blowfly, on the other hand, can perceive 100 images per second as discrete sense impressions and interpret them quickly enough to steer its movement and precisely determine its position in space.

"Yet the fly's brain is hardly bigger than a pinhead, too small by far to enable the fly's feats if it functioned exactly the way the human brain does.

"It must have a simpler and more efficient way of processing images from the eyes into visual perception, and that is a subject of intense interest for robot builders," TUM says.

Photo courtesy USDA

Robots have great difficulty perceiving their surroundings through their cameras, and even more difficulty making sense of what they see, TUM adds.

"Even the recognition of obstacles in their own work space takes too long. So people still need to protect their automated helpers, for example, by surrounding them with safety enclosures."

A more direct, supportive collaboration between human and machine is a central research goal of the "excellence cluster" named CoTeSys, Cognition for Technical Systems, a collaboration of about a hundred scientists and engineers from five universities and institutes in the Munich area of Germany.

To understand how flies see and process their coordination, the CoTeSys group built a flight simulator for flies.

"Here they're investigating what goes on in flies' brains while they're flying. Their goal is to put similar capabilities in human hands--for example, to aid in developing robots that can independently apprehend and learn from their surroundings," TUM says.

Photo by David Braun

On a wraparound display, the researchers present diverse patterns, movements, and sensory stimuli to blowflies. The insect is held in place by a halter, so that electrodes can register the reactions of its brain cells, enabling the researchers to observe and analyze what happens in a fly's brain when the animal whizzes in criss-cross flight around a room, TUM says.

Moving pictures displayed here simulate flight for an immobilized fly; electrodes give researchers a window into the fly's neural activity and vision processing.

Photo courtesy Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology

The first results show one thing very clearly: The way flies process the images from their immobile eyes is completely different from they way the human brain processes visual signals, the university adds.

"Movements in space produce so-called 'optical flux fields' that characterize specific kinds of motion definitively.

"In forward motion, for example, objects rush past on the sides, and foreground objects appear to get bigger. Near and distant objects appear to move differently.

"The first step for the fly is to construct a model of these movements in its tiny brain. The speed and direction with which objects before the fly's eyes appear to move generate, moment by moment, a typical pattern of motion vectors, the flux field, which in a second step is assessed by the so-called "lobula plate," a higher level of the brain's vision center.

"In each hemisphere there are only 60 nerve cells responsible for this; each reacts with particular intensity when presented with the pattern appropriate to it.

"For the analysis of the optical flux fields, it's important that motion information from both eyes be brought together. This happens over a direct connection of specialized neurons called VS cells. In this way, the fly gets a precise fix on its position and movement."

Image courtesy Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology

"Through our results, the network of VS cells in the fly's brain responsible for rotational movement is one of the best understood circuits in the nervous system," explains Alexander Borst, a neurobiologist from the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology.

The discoveries of the neuroscientists are also particularly interesting to guidance and control engineers at Technischen Universität München, who also collaborate in CoTeSys.

Under the leadership of Martin Buss and Kolja Kühnlenz, the TUM researchers are working to develop intelligent machines that can observe their environment through cameras, learn from what they see, and react appropriately to the current situation, the university explained.

"Their long-range aim is to enable the creation of intelligent machines that can interact with people directly, effectively, and safely. Even in factories, the safety barriers between humans and robots should fall. To that end, simple, fast, and efficient methods for the analysis and interpretation of camera pictures are absolutely essential."

TUM researchers are developing small, flying robots whose position and movement in flight will be controlled by a computer system for visual analysis inspired by the example of the fly's brain, the university said.

Robot Asks for Directions

Antoher TUM-built mobile robot, the Autonomous City Explorer (ACE), was challenged to find its way from the institute to Marienplatz at the heart of Munich--a distance of about a mile--by stopping passers-by and asking for directions. To do this, ACE had to interpret the gestures of people who pointed the way, and it had to negotiate the sidewalks and traffic crossings safely, TUM said.

"Increasingly natural interaction between intelligent machines and humans is unthinkable without efficient image analysis. Insights gained from the flight simulator for flies--through the scientific interplay CoTeSys fosters among researchers from various disciplines--offer an approach that might be simple enough to be technically portable from one domain to the other, from the insects to the robots."

Navigating only by asking pedestrians it encountered for directions, the robot called ACE, or Autonomous City Explorer, made its way from the institute where it was built--at TUM, the Technische Universitaet Muenchen--to Marienplatz roughly a mile away. A project of the Munich-based CoTeSys collaboration, ACE is part of a larger effort to enable more natural, effective, and safe interaction between machines and people.

Photo courtesy LSR/TUM

The Geography of Swine Flu and Other Pandemics

The United Kingdom is the country most at risk to the spread of a swine flu epidemic, reports Maplecroft, a research organization that focuses on global risks to business.

The UK-based company released three maps and indices revealing the countries most at risk from an influenza pandemic, including swine flu and bird (avian) flu.

Maplecroft also created the Influenza Pandemic Risk Index (IPRI), which consists of three categories: Risk of Emergence, Risk of Spread, and Capacity to Contain. "Each index generates a list of countries most at risk and that require a tailored policy response on the part of government and business," Maplecroft said in a statement.

The map of Risk of Spread shows the United Kingdom most at risk to the spread of an influenza pandemic, ranking number 1 out of 213 countries. The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Russia, Canada and Japan are also categorized as extreme risk because of their high population density, urbanization and busy airports.

Even though the UK and other developed Western nations are at extreme risk of spread, their capacity to contain influenza pandemics ranks low risk, however. "Large stockpiling of drugs and a sophisticated health infrastructure, which the Capacity to Contain index captures, means they have very effective measures with which to fight human influenza," Maplecroft explained.

Sub-Saharan Africa stands out as the area least able to contain pandemic influenza with 27 out of the 30 most extreme risk countries.

"The capacity of a country to contain the spread of human influenza depends on factors of wealth, health infrastructure, education resources, information and communication networks, and governance."

"The Risk of Emergence index unsurprisingly categorises Mexico as extreme risk and ranks the country as fourth most at risk, whilst Vietnam, China and Bangladesh top the table," Maplecroft said.

Countries most prone to risk of emergence of swine or avian flu in humans are poorer countries that have dense rural populations, with living quarters in close proximity to livestock, Maplecroft said. This is compounded by poor hygiene, lack of access to clean water and sanitation and poor public health education.

Newly Emerging Set of Global Risks

"It is important to see a newly emerging set of global risks--whether pandemics, conflict and terrorism, resource security including water stress, or climate change as inter-related," said Alyson Warhurst, Chair of Strategy and International Development at Warwick Business School and one of the founding directors of Maplecroft.

"Climate change is causing drought and flooding which in turn leads to crop failures and the destruction of livelihoods which in turn lead to poverty and the conditions that we see increase vulnerability to pandemic flu."

Sources used to compile the Influenza Pandemic Risk Index include: WHO, UNESCO, FAO, World Organisation for Animal Health, World Bank, Environmental Research Group Oxford, World Resources Institute and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

The three IPRI maps and risk categories may be accessed on the Maplecroft Web site.

Maplecroft specializes in the analysis and creative visualization of global risks. Indicators, reports and interactive GIS maps are among the tools the company uses to assess vulnerability to over 100 global risks. The tools allow major international bodies to formulate strategy, control risk exposure, secure industry leadership and work towards a sustainable future, the company said in its statement.

Stare at a word or an object through these smart eyeglasses and they will call up information about what you're looking at.

Applications for this new technology developed by German researchers could include a surgeon being able to call up X-ray images while in the process of operating on a patient, or an engineer being able to see the finer specific details on building plans.

Image courtesy Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems

"The data eyeglasses can read from the engineer's eyes which details he needs to see on the building plans. A CMOS chip with an eye tracker in the microdisplay makes this possible. The eyeglasses are connected to a PDA, display information and respond to commands," says a statement released by the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS) in Dresden.

For car designers, secret agents in the movies and jet fighter pilots, data eyeglasses--also called head-mounted displays, or HMDs for short--are everyday objects. They transport the wearer into virtual worlds or provide the user with data from the real environment, IPMS said.

Birdirectional and Interactive

At present head-mounted display devices can only display information. "We want to make the eyeglasses bidirectional and interactive so that new areas of application can be opened up," says Michael Scholles, business unit manager at IPMS.

A group of scientists at IPMS is working on a device which incorporates eye-tracking--users can influence the content presented by moving their eyes or fixing on certain points in the image. "Without having to use any other devices to enter instructions, the wearer can display new content, scroll through the menu or shift picture elements."

Scholles believes that the bidirectional data eyeglasses will yield advantages wherever people need to consult additional information but do not have their hands free to operate a keyboard or mouse.

The researchers have integrated their system's eye tracker and image reproduction on a chip measuring about three-quarters of an inch square, that is fitted behind the prototype eyeglasses hinge on the wearer's temple. This makes the device small, light, easy to manufacture and inexpensive, IPMS said.

Images Projected Onto Retina

The image on the microdisplay is projected onto the retina of the user so that it appears to be viewed from a distance of about three feet (one meter). "The image has to outshine the ambient light to ensure that it can be seen clearly against changing and highly contrasting backgrounds. For this reason the research scientists use OLEDs, organic light-emitting diodes, to produce microdisplays of particularly high luminance," IPMS said.

In industry and in the medical field, the interactive data eyeglasses could enable numerous tasks to be performed more simply, efficiently and precisely, IPMS believes.

"Many scenarios are possible, including patients' vital functions, MRT and x-ray images for the operating surgeon, construction drawings for erection engineers and installation instructions for service technicians."

Some users have already tried out conventional head-mounted displays, but the results were not very impressive, IPMS said. In most cases they were found to be too expensive, too heavy, too bulky and not very ergonomic.

"We have now overcome these hurdles," says Scholles. With his team and colleagues from other Fraunhofer institutes he is already working on the next development stage of the bidirectional eyeglasses.

A missing link in the evolution of the front claw of living scorpions and horseshoe crabs was identified with the discovery of a 390 million-year-old fossil, according to researchers at Yale University and the University of Bonn, Germany.

The specimen, named Schinderhannes bartelsi, was found fossilized in slate from a quarry near Bundenbach in Germany, a site that yields spectacularly durable pyrite-preserved fossils -- findings collectively known as the Hunsrück Slate, said a news release about the finding.

"With a head like the giant Cambrian aquatic predator Anomalocaris and a body like a modern arthropod, the specimen is the only known example of this unusual creature," said Derek Briggs, director of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History and an author of the paper appearing in today's issue of the journal Science.

The fossil's head section has large bulbous eyes, a circular mouth opening and a pair of segmented, opposable appendages with spines projecting inward along their length. The trunk section is made up of 12 segments, each with small appendages, and a long tail spine. Between the head and trunk, there is a pair of large triangular wing-like limbs -- that likely propelled the creature like a swimming penguin, according to Derek Briggs.  

Reconstruction by Elke Groening
Photo courtesy Steinmann Institute/University of Bonn

"Scientists have puzzled over the origins of the paired grasping appendages found on the heads of scorpions and horseshoe crabs," the news statement said. "The researchers suggest that Schinderhannes gives a hint. Their appendages may be an equivalent to those found in the ancient predatory ancestor, Anomalocaris -- even though creatures with those head structures were thought to have become extinct by the middle of the Cambrian Period, 100 million years before Schinderhannes lived."

The Hunsrück Slate has previously produced some of the most valuable clues to understanding the evolution of arthropods - including early shrimp-like forms, a scorpion and sea spiders as well as the ancient arthropods trilobites, Yale said.

This finding caps almost 20 years of study by Briggs on the Hunsrück Slate. "Sadly, the quarry from which this fabulous material comes has closed for economic reasons, so the only additional specimens that are going to appear now are items that are already in collectors' hands and that may not have been fully prepared or realized for what they are," Briggs said.