The July issue of IEEE Computer magazine (full text available electronically in your friendly local library) has a group of articles on how Virtual Reality is being used for complex explorations of brains and neuro systems, and several other items of interest.
Storers and colleagues report on “Reverse Engineering Animal Vision with Virtual Reality and Genetics” — cool!!
I learn that VR is just the thing for vision research, assuming the system has sufficiently low latency and high resolution. Classic methods of presenting stimuli for vision studies can now be seen as tepid compromises due to the lack of better alternatives. But with VR, you can create a complete visual field, changing with time, and registered to the eyes of the subject–what we wanted to do all along.
The scientists in question study non-human species (flies, spiders, things with cool eyes). So the VR system needs to present stimuli relevant to the particular subject’s visual system. Yet another “species appropriate” computer interface!
In fact, the parameters of non-human vision systems are quite different than humans, so the VR displays depart from those of ordinary humancentric systems. The authors have created an open source package, flyvr, to enable the precise specification of these visual parameters.
Similarly, it is necessary to track the movements of the subject, either free moving or tethered. This is done through extensions of standard VR visual tracking taking account of the species specific locomotion (e.g., flying) or by simulating movement for tethered subjects (e.g., by measuring wingbeats).
The authors note the additional difficulties in calibrating the system, since the subjects cannot give verbal reports about the effects of latency or other problems.
This system has been used to implement “species appropriate” VR systems, such as FlyCave. These environments enable less constrained and more natural movement, and can be programmed for complex, naturalistic scenarios.
(The ethics of these experiments is a close call, as far as I’m concerned. But if you are going to play god with spiders and flies, you should do it right.)
Another article discusses “Open Source intelligence” (OSINT) — Robert David Steele’s explanation of why “Open Source” collection and analysis are the right thing to do.
It’s kind of a strange piece, full of strong but questionable assertions, such as, “open source is the only form of engineering that’s affordable, interoperable, scalable, and therefore sustainable.”
One crucial point Steele makes is that a large amount, he says 80% or more, of what you need to know is not secret, and is available from public or open sources. Only a tiny fraction of critical information comes from secret sources and methods.
A second point is that lot’s of people need “intelligence”–data and analysis about the state of the world–not just the “National Security” sector that runs intelligence agencies.
Steele clearly has a whole hive of bees in his bonnet about the US National Intelligence apparatus and political leadership. One doesn’t have agree with his sweeping condemnations to see his point.
Of course, the powers that be don’t actually want to “fix” the fact that they own the system. His blithe proposal that everyone should do everything open source, and we should deep six the national security state are, well, not believable.
But anything that moves in that direction would probably be good for everyone.
There is also an interview with Sensei Andrew Tanenbaum — we are not worthy! Where did Linux come from? From Andy’s lab, who showed it could be done.
Heroes still walk amongst us.
References
- Stowers, John R. , Anton Fuhrmann, Maximilian Hofbauer, Martin Streinzer, Axel Schmid, Michael H. Dickinson, and Andrew D. Straw, Reverse Engineering Animal Vision with Virtual Reality and Genetics. Computer, 47 (7):38-45, July 2014.
- Berghel, Hal, Robert David Steele on OSINT. Computer, 47 (7):76-81, July 2014.
- Severance, Charles, Andrew S. Tanenbaum: The Impact of MINIX. Computer, 47 (7):7-8, July 2014.
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