September 20, 2008
volvo, swarming locusts for safety
Volvo is working on technology that applies the swarming patterns of locusts to automobile safety.
Rind’s research at the Insect Vision Laboratory focuses on the behavioral patterns of locusts in flight and how it is that millions of them can swarm without hitting each other. Turns out the bugs’ visual input is transmitted directly to their wings, seemingly bypassing the brain in what Rind calls the Locust Principle. Volvo engineers first heard of Rind’s work in 2002 and set to work trying to adapt the Locust Principle to cars.
The work hinged on developing an algorithm that would mimic the insect’s ability to send visual stimuli directly to its wings, then applying it to a vehicle’s computerized safety features. Easier said than done. “As it turns out, the locust processing system is much more sophisticated than the hardware and software currently available,” Ekmark says. “In the end, technology was no match for nature.”
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