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Week 11 Report

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Over the term, Dr. Stonedahl and I have worked on the videos of the chicks to find a way to accurately track their movements and create a model of them. So far, we have accomplished the following goals: ·        We effectively remove the background of the video by using Gaussian blur and threshold to convert the video into black-and-white. We further use erosion to reduce the area of the chicks so that it decreases the occasions when the chicks move next to one another and they merge in the process. We also use the contour tool to mark the center of the chicks (the blue dot) because it makes it easier to store the coordinates of the current position of each chick further on. Background Removal  ·        Learning from the Whirligig Beetle Project, we also successfully create a multiple frame tracking function. We create a Chick class where it stores the current location of one chick. Then we use 3 lists of the Chick object to keep track of all the chicks: one to store the chic
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Week 10 Report

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This week, Dr. Stonedahl and I focused on labeling the chicks and storing their movement coordinates. We labeled each chick with a unique string of numbers and letters, and a color. Each time the chicks merge together, the string will change to a new one and store that information. Finally, we draw a graph to visualize the chain of movement of the chicks over time. The graph below illustrates the movements of the chicks throughout the whole video. We can see that the chicks pretty much move all over the places, with the concentration of the lower left and lower right corners. Full-length Movement Graph The graph below illustrates the movements of the 3 initial chicks (from frame 4100 to frame 20000). In this graph, the 3 chicks often gather around in the middle and the upper right corner of the box. 3-chicks Movement Graph The graph below illustrates the movements of the 6 chicks at the end of the video (from frame 39400 to the end frame 48958). Unlike the case of 3 chi
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Week 9 - Update so far

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Over the past few weeks, Dr. Stonedahl and I have decided to change our focus to The Chick Tracking Project instead. Our mission is to create an algorithm to track the movements of the chicks and make the coordinates as exact as possible. So far, we attempted to remove the background by using OpenCV so that we can further identify the position of the chicks. It works quite well when the chicks are separated. However, when the chicks begin to move towards one another (especially when they come into contact), the function fails as it cannot differentiate between the "merged chick" and the individual chick (as seen below). I have tried to come up with some ways to fix this problem but none of them seemed to work yet.
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Week 2 + 3 Report

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These past 2 weeks, I have done lots of readings on the book An Introduction to Agent-based Modelling by Uri Wilensky and William Rand. I read from Chapter 1 to Chapter 7, learning about what agent-based modelling means, how to create a simple agent-based model and how to analyze the model that we have. I further studied some models in the library of NetLogo, including the Flocking Model. This model illustrates the flocking of birds based on 3 primary rules: alignment, cohesion, and separation. Learning about how this model works and figuring out the code behind it helps me have a better understanding of the Whirligig Models (the stream, the turn-back, getting food...) I also did some readings on articles about the whirligig beetles' behaviors, namely Social Behavior of Adult Whirligig Beetle by V. J. Fitzgerald and Aggregation and Predator Avoidance in Whirligig Beetles by K. Vulinec, M. C. Miller. I learned that whirligig beetles are very sensitive to the temperature of the e
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Week 1 Report

This week I had the chance to do the followings: Did tutorials 1,2 & 3 about models, commands and procedures in NetLogo Learned basic syntax to make a model in NetLogo Programming Guide Started reading some of the posts in Project Whirligig Blog about the overall process of researching about the behaviors of the target figure, creating an initial model and developing that model to create a more advanced and complex one Next week I will try to look into the files of the Whirligig model, run them and understand how the codes work.
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Welcome!

This blog will be used to discuss progress about the independent study research that Dr. Stonedahl and I are working on. The plan is to model whirligig beetles' movement.  This builds on earlier work discussed in  this blog .
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