The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 77, No. 11, Ed. 1 Friday, November 10, 1989 Page: 9 of 16
sixteen pages : ill. ; page 19 x 15 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
THE RICE THRESHER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1989 9
in Venezuela the species we
work on are what we call highly
social—they often have thou-
sands of wasps per nest and as
many as 10 percent may be
queens."
The question there, she says,
is what keeps the groups to-
gether. Part of the answer is
found in the nature of the threats
to the nest, the predators, and
part in how similar the queens
are genetically— their "related-
ness." The study of relatedness
requires a biochemical assay,
which means, ultimately, that
somebody has to go out and
catch large numbers of wasps.
Which brings us to the crucial
point, or what would seem to me
at least to be the crucial point:
getting stung.
According to Strassman, it's
no big deal.
"Usually you only get stung if
you don't know the wasps, or if
you don't care. I'm real cautious.
The last trip we took I got stung
once, and it was by a species I'd
never worked on. The way we
collect the nests often is well just
take one of those ziplock bags,
and we'll put it over the nest and
zip it shut. You have to make sure
there's no branches in the way.
So I just reached up —the wasps
were tiny, and I thought oh, these
are just not going to be any prob-
lem—and I broke off a twig and
zap, one got me. We collected 45
more nests, though, and none of
cies of wasps can be easily col-
lected.
"Another sort of bizarre thing
we have," she says, opening a
drawer and pulling out car ds with
tiny objects pinned to them,
"because we are quite interested
in size and one thing we use for
measuring that is heads—we just
have cards and cards and cards of
wasp heads."
Wasp heads. Wasp boxes. Pic-
tures of wasps everywhere. You
have to wonder how it is that
somebody gets started doing
something like this.
Strassman says that in her
case it was the result of a sort of
"evil fascination" with wasps.
"I was terrified of them then,"
she says. "A friend and I were
waiting for the summer to begin
so that we could go study verte-
brates. It was February in Austin
and the wasps were already nest-
ing, so we sort of went out to this
place and started watching them
and marking them, basically on a
dare, and they were just so fasci-
nating—it was like a soap opera
seeing who was going to be on
which nest and who had taken
over as queen. So I got into it in a
fairly empirical way. The friend
that I started with went on to
work on birds in Africa. And I got
the wasps.
"Of course by now I love
wasps, and I think they're just
every bit as cute as everything
else."
to the ceiling. At the moment it is
being ignored by everyone, in-
cluding Dr. Rui J. P. de Fig-
ureido, who is explaining it to me.
"This robot is more capable,
more complex, than robots have
been previously, " he says. He
speaks quietly, intensely, as
drops me off at the machine vi-
sion lab with a graduate student
and heads for home.
This lab is a bit darker than the
world room. There are more
plastic models here, too, again on
the space theme. A large frame-
work obviously intended to rep-
ureido's designated explainer,
about the shuttle and he answers
that it is left over from a project
run for JSC, which algorithims
were developed which would
enable a robot to track a satellite
in Earth orbit and recover it.
"We do eyes here," Tagare
Graduate student Larry Ciscon checks out the robot in the Abercrombie Lab "World Room." The glass in the background is
intended to protect researchers from "runaway robots."
HI If
III*
.Y*.
Associate Professor of Biology Joan Strasssman shows off some of the wasp
heads she uses in her work.
us got stung."
Wasp nests, Strassman says,
vary from species to species in
size and design, and their relative
security is, as one might expect,
related to the behavior of the
wasps which inhabit them. She
shows me a few, in a room down
the hall from her office.
"This—this is a big mama.
This is the same genus as these
guys," she says, comparing a
nest the size of a coconut with a
number of smaller ones."—only
there're just gonna be tons of
wasps in a nest like this."
Dozens of boxes with quarter-
sized holes are piled on an upper
shelf. These are used in Brazos
Bend State Park, Strassman
says, as ready-mad^ nesting
places from which certain spe-
•We do eyes (and arms, and
ears, and brains...)*
They call it the "world room."
It's rectangular and white,
mostly, except for the floor,
which is covered by black plastic
tiles. A long line of windows
extends along one wall and
there's a kind of mini-Mission
Control set up behind them, with
people standing around com-
puter terminals. Up in one cor-
ner someone has hung a large
plastic model of the Space
Shuttle, with a black cloth draped
behind it.
Out in the middle of the floor
sits the sole permanent inhabi-
tant of this world, a large metal
box on wheels with two arms and
a television camera on top. It is
connected by a thick black cable
though he were a missionary and
I a potential convert. "I don't say
that this robot is already func-
tional—we are building it—but
basically this robot has greater
reasoning capability. For ex-
ample industrial robots are re-
petitive robots, they are pro-
grammed to do something, and
they just follow that program in a
repetitive fashion. But this robot
can operate in an unstructured
environment."
In other words, this is a robot
which can take on the world, or at
least a much more complex ver-
sion of it than other machines
have faced. It is in fact intended to
push the limits of machine auton-
omy, to lead the way to robots
which will be able to operate
without direct human interven-
tion. Thus, the "world room," a
controlled environment in which
scenes can be created and tasks
set for the robot to accomplish.
De Figureido points out a few
obvious applications where the
participation of robots might
augment or replace a human
presence: in dangerous environ-
ments like outer space or the
deep ocean. The Johnson Space
Center, he says, has expressed
an interest in the work being
done at Rice with an eye toward
robot-human cooperation in or-
bit and in the exploration of the
moon and planets. A consortium
has been formed, linking Rice,
the University of Texas, Texas
A&M, and UT Arlington to the
JSC with the special purpose of
working on the problem of space
robotics.
The Rice robot itself is a sort of
testbed for software and hard-
ware. It is, in essence, an intelli-
gent framework into which new
components can be placed to see
how they work.
In this, and in its variety of ca-
; pabilities, de Figureido tells me
as I follow him from room to
room in Abercrombie Lab, it is
unique.
"There is a lot of work going
on at MIT. But I don't know if
MIT has a robot like this. They
have mobile robots that move,
but they don't have dual arms
like we have. They have special-
ized robots that do very well at
specialized functions, but we
have a robot that we're trying to
put everything into—it has eyes
and ears and various capabilities,
it is not specialized. I think the
Japanese are the ones who are
trying to develop a robot like
ours."
De Figureido is in a hurry.
Not because he can hear the
Japanese breathing down his
neck, but because his daughter is
getting married tomorrow. He
resent a space station hangs from
the ceiling. About ten feet from a
camera is yet another space
shuttle, this time only about an
inch long and painted silver.
I ask Hemant Tagare, de Fig-
says. "We don't do anything else.
It used to be that in the next room
we did ears, but that was a while
^llet it go at that. I'd found what I
was looking for.
" 1754 *
The Ivy League Spring
in New York
Qualified upperclassmen are invited to apply for admission to
Columbia College as visiting students beginning in January
1990. Full access to housing, library resources, and upper divi-
sion courses. For further information and an application, write
or call:
Columbia College Admissions Office
212 Hamilton Hall
New York, New York 10027
(212) 854-2522
Application deadline: December 15. 1°8Q
INTERFAITH
THANKSGIVING SERVICE
RICE CHAPEL
November 20
5 - 5:30
Sponsored by Joint Campus Ministries
tjBring a can of food for local food pantry
&
COLLEGE
STUDENTS
MAJORING IN
ALLIED HEALTH
PROFESSIONS
Discover a challenging,
rewarding future that puts
you in touch with your skills.
Today's Air Force offers ongoing
opportunities for professional
development with great pay and
benefits, normal working hours,
complete medical and dental care,
and 30 days vacation with pay per
year. Learn how to qualify as an
Air Force health professional. Call
USAE HEALTH PROFESSIONS
TOLL FREE
1 -800-423-lISAF
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Kahn, Greg & Leedy, Sarah J. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 77, No. 11, Ed. 1 Friday, November 10, 1989, newspaper, November 10, 1989; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245734/m1/9/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.