Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 4-11, 1999

Volume 28, Number 7

Scientists studying how animals
move in perfect tandem

Electrical engineers A. Stephen Morse and Peter Belhumeur have received a $2.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how schools of fish, herds of deer or flocks of birds can coordinate themselves and move flawlessly, often without an apparent leader, in three dimensions.

This is the second largest 1999 award among 31 national research grants to study knowledge and distributed intelligence. The Yale study was chosen from a pool of 700 proposals.

"We hope to discover underlying concepts upon which the coordination of group motion might depend and use these concepts to help explain how fish maintain their spacing and develop guidelines for designing groupings of man-made autonomous vehicles" that will move in perfect tandem with each other, says Morse, professor of electrical engineering. Belhumeur is an associate professor in the same department.

The Yale team's grant is part of a $50 million program involving two dozen institutions in 20 states that supports a NSF initiative to focus on information technology research for the new millennium.

To discover whether there are universal principles of coordinated group motion, the Morse/Belhumeur team will develop biological models, come up with operating strategies and use computer simulation.

"We will take timed sequences of stereo video images of actual fish schools living in a large tank of 1,000 gallons or more," says Morse. "We will then image the schools' responses to various stimuli under varying conditions." The researchers will then use the information they gather to form the world's first database recording the long-term, three-dimensional motions of individual fish within a large school. Once compiled, the database, along with full documentation, will be made available to science and engineering communities via the Internet.

These experiments are expected to be useful from both the biological and engineering perspectives, says Morse. The team will test robotic versions of hypothesized biological models not possible in a fish tank and they will test a man-made school in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

"Our first goal will be to instrument these vehicles so they can function autonomously without remote control," explains Morse. "We will then experiment with a variety of maneuvers including group formation, cruising, splitting up, avoiding obstacles, and changing group shapes."

He adds, "We are very excited to have this opportunity to take our research beyond theory and into concrete practice. This NSF award also illustrates the expanding growth computer technology is having across all areas of science and engineering."

The Morse/Belhumeur research team is a cross-disciplinary group of experimental and theoretical marine biologists and experts in computer vision, control systems and robotics. They include Roger Brockett of Harvard's engineering and applied physics division; Naomi Leonard of Princeton's mechanical engineering department; and Julia Parrish and Daniel Grünbaum in the zoology department at the University of Washington/Seattle.

-- By Karen Peart

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Women with breast cancer genes risk relapse with conservative therapies

Ex-Secretary of State describes greatest foreign policy challenges facing the U.S.

Researchers discover animals will shun others with infectious diseases

Exhibit will offer Yale community a peek at libraries' treasures

HHS Secretary to talk about Medicare, privacy issues

NY governor, UPenn president are year's first Chubb Fellows

Solicitor General Waxman to speak at Law Reunion

Conference to explore 'dilemma' over use of cost-benefit analysis to make policy decisions

Headstone dedication will highlight Divinity Convocation

Goethe's contributions to science, modern culture celebrated

Grant supports STAR program to promote success in sciences

Scientists studying how animals move in perfect tandem

Two-part sculpture coming together for first time at Yale center

Human figure and landscape explored in Asian art exhibit

Exhibit features works of Chinese artist who mixes Western and Eastern styles and symbols

Yale hosts day-long conference on Asian studies

Stalin's secret plans to invade Alaska among topics discussed at international conference . . .

Yale launching annual United Way fundraising drive

Series focuses on slavery in early U.S. and the Middle Ages

Drug for glaucoma will be tested in clinical trial at the medical school

Medical program will focus on topic of breast cancer

German scholar to speak to local Humboldt chapter members

. . . In the News . . .

Campus Notes