"Watch how those fish behave when the school catches a glimpse of the shark," says my underwater guide. In a moment, a leopard shark swims into view, and the smaller fish scatter as they attempt to evade the hungry predator. Down below, a bright blue and green predator closes in on its smaller prey.
My underwater guide is Demetri Terzopoulos, professor in the artificial intelligence group at the University of Toronto and fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. With his students, Xiaoyuan Tu, Radek Grzeszczuk, and Tamer Rabie, Terzopoulos has created an undersea arena inhabited by functional, highly capable creatures. Tu, working with her mentor for over two years on the project, has been instrumental in creating this unique marine environment.
Here we find five highly authentic species, including angelfish, butterfly fish, clown fish, surgeonfish, and leopard sharks. All the species swim with grace, propelled by muscles that flex against the opposing force of the water. The leaves of an aquatic plant sway passively in the current produced as a large butterfly fish swims by it. These marine denizens have been endowed by their creators with binocular vision, with the two eyes seeing from slightly different perspectives, just as in real fishes. Each individual has a "brain," complete with species-specific internal drives, ...
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...man realm."
Additional Reading:
David Freedman, Brainmakers, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994.
Raymond Kurtzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1992.
Mitchel Resnick, Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1995.Michael and George Triantafyllou, "An Efficient Swimming Machine," Scientific American, March 1995, pp. 64--70.
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