Software under development at Ohio State University is helping scientists operate big-budget research instruments--such as high-powered microscopes and telescopes--over the Internet, more safely and efficiently than was possible before.
To view flash video, this browser needs the Flash 8 (or higher) plug-in
Transcript
Prasad Calyam:
Most scientific instruments are computer-controlled, so there's a computer and it controls the microscope's physical components. You can zoom in, zoom out, and you can do all these kinds of operations. So the idea is, having a person who's remotely accessible by the Internet so he can actually control this computer that actually controls the instrument. So that's the goal.
(Talking to student.)
As straightforward as it looks it's very demanding in the sense of the networking. You need a very fast network in the middle--and we have a statewide network called OSCNet that enables us to have fast data transfers. So all the images from the microscope to the user, they come very quickly and very crisply. And based on an understanding of how this sort of interaction--human/device interaction--happens under different network conditions. So we came up with a way we can actually tell what kind of operation is actually being with the microscope using the network.
The software is called RICE: Remote Instrumentation Collaboration Environment. So that's basically a software interface that lets you do different types of things. Up to seven people at the same time can look at the same time, at the same sample, collaborate. So we are building this tool that can enable multiple researchers to collaborate.
And also there's a big risk of doing this kind of remote thing--because if you had a bad network connection and you did something inadvertently, you pretty much break the microscope. So it could cost you thousands of dollars to fix that. So we have, in the software, some checks where we can actually check if the network is bad. Then we'll restrict some actions. So we can actually protect the equipment better. So there are all these kind of things we do to make this use of the instrument and the end-user experience kind of a successful experience.
That's the project.
Like a good doctor, Prasad Calyam is always looking for new ways to gauge the health of his patients.
But for this graduate student in electrical and computer science, the patients are the computer networks that support today's collaborative research.
Calyam sometimes finds himself thinking like an economist, too, as he tries to balance supply and demand--in this case, the supply of network bandwidth and software users' demand.
He even dabbles in a little psychology, as he studies how delays in data transmission frustrate the people who are trying to operate research instruments remotely over the Internet.
He's applying all these skills to help researchers use the Internet more safely and efficiently than ever before.
Calyam is a senior systems developer at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), where he and his colleagues are developing new software in collaboration with materials scientists at Ohio State's Center for the Accelerated Maturation of Materials (CAMM).
The software, called RICE, helps researchers control expensive instruments such as high-powered microscopes over the Internet. Special algorithms take control of the software when a user's commands--in effect, the user's demands on the system--outweigh the supply. RICE stops users from issuing commands that could break the equipment from afar.
When Calyam first thought of applying economic principles to utilize network bandwidth, he didn't have a good test case. But by then, he says, he was "wired with this concept of supply and demand and looking for places to apply it." Software for remote operation--the kind that would let CAMM scientists study materials under Ohio State microscopes whether they are sitting at their home computer or traveling abroad--turned out to be a good fit.
More great stories with
Students,
Video,
Research
Top of the Class
Yucatan Therapy
Social (Media) Butterfly
© 2008, The Ohio State University | Enarson Hall 154 W 12th Avenue | Columbus, Ohio 43210 | 614-292-OHIO
This page is maintained by: University Relations. About this site.
OSU web services system status
If you have trouble accessing this page and need to request an alternate format, contact webmaster@osu.edu.
