On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 01:00:18PM -0000, Alan B. Pearce wrote:
> >To give you an idea of the stuff they do... The whole
> >setup is on a air-isolated table, they told me that heavy
> >footsteps are sometimes enough to throw their experiments
> >off unless they isolate everything from vibration. Many
> >insects "hear" through their feet.
> 
> when I saw your first post I thought "they are moving the wrong thing". Now
> I am convinced.
> 
> The table should be kept stable, and the camera equipment should be moved to
> follow the spider, rather like an X-Y plotter which moves the pen in two
> axis.

They considered that too, but you see, the problem with that is the
camera equipment is heavy and bulky.  There are also two cameras and one
laser inferometer, acting as a microphone. All of these are from
different angles and distances. Building a setup to move these four
elements would be very expensive and very large, I think far more than
making even a very smooth table movement.

-- 
pete@petertodd.ca http://www.petertodd.ca
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