World’s Tiniest 3D Glasses on a Praying Mantis
While 3D glasses may not be a big hit when it came on to our televisions, someone, or rather something is still wearing 3D glasses. Newcastle University researchers outfitted praying mantises with tiny 3D glasses to better understand the evolution of vision, and the depth of their vision in the insect kingdom.
According to the researchers, praying mantis is the only invertebrate known to be able to see in 3D, while most species are limited to 2D. Research leader Dr. Jenny Read of the university’s Institute of Neuroscience said the study on the mechanisms of 3D vision in mantises could potentially lead to implementation of simpler algorithms for 3D sensing robots.
The eyewear which is developed by Dr. Vivek Nityananda is temporarily attached to the front of the insects’ eyes using beeswax. The mantises are then placed in front of a computer screen, on which 3D moving objects are presented to see how it responds.
“This is a really exciting project to be working on,” said Nityananda. “If we find that the way mantises process 3D vision is very different to the way humans do it, then that could open up all kinds of possibilities to create much simpler algorithms for programming 3D vision into robots.”
You can check out the experiment in the video below.
