FlyTracker: Design and Implementation of an Interactive Motion Tracking System

Abstract: At the department of neuroscience at Uppsala University one of the research groups are working with motion vision. Motion vision is how seeing animal species process moving objects in their visual fields and how they experience self motion by generating an optic flow. This is important for animals of all sizes, everything from large mammals to insects. At the neuroscience department at Uppsala University they are using flies in their research as these are easier to work with than larger animals. Behavioral output as a result of visual stimuli is what is studied in the project I have been involved in as a part of this thesis. This is done by a track ball setup. The setup consists of a cup with a light plastic ball in it, from the bottom of the cup light airflow is added to reduce friction between the ball and the cup. A fly is tethered on top of the ball in such a way that when the fly is trying to walk the ball instead rotates accordingly. The ball rotation can then be measured by two sensors, both of which have been extracted from an optical mouse. There is no available, ready-made, software for reading the raw mouse data from the two sensors and from that input reconstructs the virtual movement path of the fly using. Therefore the purpose of this thesis has been to design and implement a user friendly and functional software system that fulfill this requirement. The design was done according to the principles of user-centered system design although with less formal documentation. This proved to generate a very good result. The end-users were included in every phase of the development process and it really was a huge advantage for the development process. Although all of the methods made available by the theories were not followed religiously, especially regarding documentation, that just displayed the power of agile methods were quality is more important than documentation. And the evaluation at the end of the project showed that the level of usability was high.