Imaging Barn
Introduction
What is the Imaging Barn?
The Imaging Barn is a collaborative project between Center for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior near Radolfzell. Housed within a traditional 18th-century barn at the MPIAB campus, it is a core facility for studying the dynamics of highly naturalistic interactions, such as when animals or people meet, eat, or make decisions together.
What are the facilities?
The Imaging Barn is a 15 m x 7 m x 6 m free-flight aviary equipped with state-of-the-art tracking and projection technology, including:
- 30 infrared motion-capture cameras from VICON (used in movie and game productions)
- RGB cameras to develop computer vision
- active and passive acoustic position tracking
- a potential platform for Virtual Reality
What research does it support?
The Imaging Barn allows for highly controlled experiments on a diverse range of species, from insects, bats, bird flocks, and human groups. Due to its large volume, it supports research into the collective behavior of freely moving groups of individuals and accurate tracking and body posture reconstruction. The Imaging Barn is currently instrumented for real-time 3D sound localization.
