Have you ever wondered what a fly or a small crab would do in virtual reality? Researchers in Australia now have the answers even if you haven't.
The results of the study by Adelaide-based Flinders University show that insects and other invertebrates appear to react to obstacles in a virtual environment much the same way they would in the actual world.
“We developed computer programs that create a virtual reality experience for the animals to move through,” said Dr. Yuri Ogawa, a research fellow in neuroscience at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute.
The software adapts the visual scenery to the animals movements to create a virtual reality experience. Experiments showed a hoverfly attempting to turn to the left in its flight and a fiddler crab avoiding a virtual bird flying overhead.
“Using machine learning and computer vision algorithms, we were able to observe the animals and work out what they are doing,” Ogawa said.
Their virtual world for invertebrates can unlock new ways to little-understood animal behaviors, such as aerodynamic powers of flying insects, according to researchers. This could lead to technological breakthroughs in fields like aviation and precision devices.
“Virtual and augmented reality is also instrumental in industries ranging from healthcare to architecture and the transport industry,” said study co-author Dr. Richard Leibbrandt, a lecturer at Flinder’s College of Science and Engineering.
The software platform, developed with the Unity Editor interface, is accessible to researchers worldwide and is designed to eliminate the need for coding expertise. A paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Methods of Ecology and Evolution details the results of the study.
According to Raymond Aoukar, a computer science graduate at Flinder’s who also worked on the study, virtual reality technologies are now “mature and accessible” enough to run on consumer computers.
This allows the study of animal behavior in an environment that is “systematically controlled, but still more natural than a typical lab experiment,” he said.
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