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 motion-capture studio track bird flock


Animal motion-capture studio tracks bird flocks and insect swarms

New Scientist

An animal behaviour lab built inside a converted barn uses motion-capture cameras to track the movements and behaviours of entire flocks of birds or swarms of insects. The so-called SMART-BARN resembles a Hollywood motion-capture studio with 30 infrared cameras capable of tracking up to 500 individual markers attached to animal's bodies. All of this takes place within an area one quarter the size of a standard basketball court, and which can include feeding stations and animal perches. "We have a very high precision and controllable environment, but with large enough volume for the animals to move and interact much as they do in nature", says Máté Nagy at Eeötvös Loránd University in Hungary. Nagy and his colleagues showed that their SMART-BARN lab can also track animals without any markers by using six video cameras and computer vision software based on artificial intelligence. The space also has 30 microphones to record animal sounds and even pinpoint animal locations based on sound.