iQuarium

Dates

February 2003 — January 2004

Principal Investigator

Katie Wasserman (PI) with Audrey Roy and Aaron Sokoloski

Problem

The principles of ocean engineering and fluid dynamics are not widely known or understood.

Goal

To give people a hands-on introduction to the field of ocean engineering by placing an aquarium display screen in a busy place at MIT.

Overview

iQuarium is a colorful, interactive aquarium display screen that features swimming fish and a visible flow field in their wake. The student team has created an animated fish screensaver with 3D modeling and rendering software, based on libraries of empirical data that exist on fluid flow phenomena such as the complex vortices that form around live swimming fish. Researchers usually collect this data in tow tanks and water tunnels. The tools to visualize this data are inaccessible to anyone other than researchers in the field; it takes weeks or even months to transform the sets of empirical data into visualizations using the latest software. For iQuarium, vertical flow field visualizations have been broken down into a library and brought together into a pseudo-real-time sequence that a user can control. Anyone who passes by the display will be able to see the vortices shedding almost instantly as the fish swim.

The iQuarium project brings hydrodynamics out of the lab into the hallway, for everyone to learn and play.

Project Output

Publications

iCampus Includes iQuarium - MIT News Office, May 14, 2003
"iCampus projects this year include the first interactive ocean engineering lab accessible to the public, and games that can be played while pedaling a stationary bike"

Swimming with MIT's Virtual Fish - Wired, March 7, 2003
"Visitors to MIT will soon have more to see than lab equipment and students snoozing through afternoon lectures. They'll also be able to gawk at—and even manipulate—fish as they swim alongside the pedestrians in MIT's famous one-sixth-mile-long Infinite Corridor..."

Interactive Workout, Aquarium Funded by iCampus - The Tech, January 15, 2003
"Cyclescore, a creation that transforms exercise on a stationary bicycle into a competitive race with other gym participants, is among the winning project proposals receiving $30,000 from the Microsoft/MIT iCampus alliance..."

Links

iQuarium