The chimps are presented with various mazes on a video screen. They
must then navigate a cartoon monkey through the labyrinth to a goal. The
video mazes give chimps a bird’s-eye view of the puzzle, so that they can
determine the correct path before embarking on it.

‘It’s like a Pac-Man game,’ says Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who is conducting
the trials in the university’s centre for language research. ‘Right now
no one is chasing the monkey in these mazes, but in the future that might
happen also.’

Teaching apes to make the mental connection between the joystick and
the cartoon monkey is not as difficult as might be expected. Some of the
chimps had developed observational skills when being taught sign language.
They picked up the video game after just a few demonstrations. Savage-Rambaugh
gave the less observant chimps a snack each time they kept a target on the
screen within borders which she made tighter and tighter. Eventually, they
got the hang of it.

The study has been under way only a few weeks, but Savage-Rumbaugh says
the chimps are already able to negotiate mazes like those found in a child’s
puzzle book. Some chimps can even manage mazes that would give most adults
trouble.

By recording the performances of chimps, Savage-Rumbaugh hopes to determine
how much of the apes’ game-playing prowess is due to lucky wandering and
how much can be attributed to their plotting part, or all, of the path ahead
in advance. She believes that the ability to envision routes in space is
related to the planning skills needed to construct tools and sentences.
To make an effective tool, she argues, one must know what it will be used
for. Also, forming an effective sentence requires some sense of how it will
be received.

By studying the video-game skills of apes with varying communication
abilities, Savage-Rumbaugh hopes to glean more insight into this language/planning
relationship. She also hopes to learn how planning skills changed during
evolution by the method of turning the video controls over to primates from
various evolutionary paths, including bonobos, orang-utans, rhesus macaques
and even young humans.

Krishan Ahuja, an acoustics specialist from the Georgia Institute of
Technology, intends to blast the vacant house with a bank of woofers and
tweeters 2.5 metres tall, 4.5 metres wide and 6 metres deep. The speakers
can generate a range of frequencies from a shrieking 4 kilohertz to an inaudible
shudder of 2 hertz.

Ahuja will tinker with the shape, frequency and volume of the shock
waves to simulate a variety of sonic booms. Each will be heard simultaneously
by test subjects outside and inside, where the sound will rattle plates,
windows and cutlery.

No other method can determine how annoying sonic booms are inside a
house, Ahuja says. He hopes to pinpoint which booms are least disturbing
to people inside and out. Engineers with NASA and US aircraft manufacturers
will then be able to use the results to design aircraft that can travel
faster than the speed of sound with a boom less annoying than that of Concorde.

Similar device are already widely employed by the police in the US and
Europe. They look like ordinary radar speed guns, but instead of bouncing
microwaves off vehicles, they use narrow beams of infra-red. The laser is
precise enough to check the speed ofa single car even on acrowded motorway.

‘In addition to this, the laser beam is not detectable by radar detectors,’
says Scott Patterson, cofounder and vice-president of the Georgia-based
firm Laser Atlanta, which developed the device. Some drivers have electronics
devices which can detect radar speed traps.

Patterson says the hand-held units are cheaper, smaller versions of
rangefinders used on tanks and military aircraft. A laser diode in the ‘barrel’
emits 20-microwatt pulses 400 times per second, while a sensor picks up
the reflected signals. The target’s speed is calculated from changes in
the times for successive pulses take for the round trip.

The guns do have shortcomings. They do not work in a moving car, and
they cost four times as much as microwave speed guns. Nevertheless about
70 units have been supplied to police departments in the US and Europe according
to John Kusek of Kustom Signals, which markets the speed guns. ‘Most of
them are buying just one to see how it works, to get their feet wet,’ he
says.

Kusek says the laser guns have found unexpected popularity among a few
paramilitary police teams. Using the laser gun’s rangefinding ability, police
sharp-shooters can determine the precise distance to a target, which helps
them adjust the elevation of their conventional weapons.

The ability to determine distance also interests NASA, which plans to
fly a version of the gun aboard the space shuttle Atlantis in July. According
to NASA spokesman Kyle Herring, astronauts will use it to mon-itor the distance
between the shuttle and a tethered satellite.

The radar-based anging system used in previous shuttles is ineffective
at less than 30 metres and has been unreliable at larger distances. It can
also damage sensitive satellites. If the test flight is successful, NASA
may use the laser guns in future missions involving satellite rendezvous
and docking.

Another variation of the laser gun is being used aboard yachts currently
competing in the America’s Cup. Patterson says US teams, the French crew,
the Italians and the New Zealanders are using them ‘essentially to spy on
their opponents during the races’. The sailors are reluctant to reveal their
tricks, but Patterson says crews use laser guns in conjunct-ion with compass
bearings and satellite positioning data to establish the location, direction
and speed of competing yachts.