
Is Life a Smoother Ride If You're a Chicken? - ColinWright
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/28/166059579/is-life-a-smoother-ride-if-you-re-a-chicken
======
flyinglizard
After seeing the bird defecating on their kitchen counter, I decided this
would be the _perfect_ thread to ShowHN my latest creation: a 3 axis gimbal
stabilizer for those not lucky enough to have cooperative avians. It's
electromechanical, not biological, so don't get your hopes up.

[https://vimeo.com/81292853](https://vimeo.com/81292853)

The video shows a synchronous split screen of the very same flight, with an
unstabilized GoPro on left half and a stabilized one on the right half.

(other than the aircraft and the camera, everything there is self developed:
firmware, hardware, gimbal mechanics)

Some more videos here:
[https://vimeo.com/user22741569/videos](https://vimeo.com/user22741569/videos)

~~~
ChuckMcM
FYI the audio is distracting, consider blanking it out and replacing with
silence.

The gymbal is pretty effective, do you use a 6DOF system to provide the
feedback? I have a system that I had hacked together with a 3 axis
accelerometer and never could get it critically damped to the point where you
wouldn't see some oscillation in the view. I speculated that if you had a gyro
as well you might be able to use the magnitude of the gyro signal to tune the
feedback loop with the accelerometer such that you could keep it critically
damped over a wider variety of changes in orientation.

~~~
flyinglizard
There are other such systems as you describe using 6DOF (like Alexmos, used in
many DIY projects and commercial handheld gimbals), but none get to this level
of performance. In particular these systems develop a lot of horizon drift
under lateral loads affecting the accelerometer. Our system can be configured
to use up to 19DoF (that's 9DoF x 2 sensors, and a barometer), which is
partially the reason for the performance you see here.

------
joosters
Pah. Chickens are for the budget low-end steadicams. Real pros use owlcams:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBpF_Zj4OA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBpF_Zj4OA)

~~~
damon_c
Funny, this owl video shows that when blindfolded, the owl's vestibulo-ocular
abilities are undiminished. I was wondering about that when the chicken video
guy was speculating about blindfolding to prevent the chicken from rapidly
changing targets. I guess it would actually work. Seems kinda mean though.

------
Nogwater
It's great to see SmarterEveryDay
[http://www.youtube.com/user/destinws2](http://www.youtube.com/user/destinws2)
get some press. Be sure to check out the Deep Dive play lists.

------
judk
There's a big flaw in the NPR writeup. The research is on _head_ tracking, but
the writeup leads with an example of _head + eye_ tracking, which is a much
more difficult-to-test but more important hypothesis.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
Yeah, I thought that was a little odd too, but remember that birds can't move
their eyes, so for them the two are equivalent.

~~~
colanderman
This… this is almost certainly why chickens' heads track more "smoothly" than
humans. We don't need our heads to track; our eyes can with much less effort.

------
wolfgke
Someone already made a song out of this topic:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBpF_Zj4OA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBpF_Zj4OA)
(this is the original scientific video this song was based on:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6M-h5g3PwI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6M-h5g3PwI)).

~~~
tunnuz
I was about to link it.

------
Theodores
I wonder how this would have helped 'Mike the Headless Chicken', a chicken
that survived for years without a head, being fed with a pipette and raking it
in at freak shows:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken)

------
balabaster
This is too funny. Thanks HN for bringing some much needed amusement to my
morning :D

~~~
xux
At first I thought the article was a lesson about taking risks in life. But
this was an amusing surprise.

------
salient
Just use a camera with OIS instead!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbd7TtKrDFc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbd7TtKrDFc)

------
neil_s
How has no one mentioned this video yet:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLwML2PagbY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLwML2PagbY)

Mercedes discovered this property of chickens a while back, and made a great
commercial out of it.

~~~
Someone
And slightly older, Fuji: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26bw-
fF3QbY&feature=player_em...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26bw-
fF3QbY&feature=player_embedded)

The Mercedes one is way better, though.

------
n3rdy
I actually thought this was going to be an article about whether people with a
smaller risk appetite have more stability, but nope, really is about chicken.

------
yllus
A useful application for readers of HN: Save money on a steadicam and just buy
a GoPro + chicken instead.

~~~
misframer
Or just let YouTube stabilize the video for you.

~~~
joosters
Perhaps they have warehouses full of chickens who do the video stabilizing,
just like their armies of pigeons for search? -
[http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html](http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html)

