The Sub Sea Holodeck: A 14-megapixel immersive virtual environment for studying cephalopod camouflage behavior

As part of a project to study how cephalopods sense, respond to, and camouflage themselves in a marine environment characterized by dynamic light fields we have fabricated a `Sub Sea Holodeck (SSH)´. The system consists of a 101 × 101 × 66cm aquarium with plasma displays on the vertical sides, 2 DLP projection displays on the top, and 1 DLP projection display on the bottom. Taken together, these 7 displays create a virtual, visual aquatic environment whose goal is to elicit and record the response of marine animals that can modulate their skin color. The system is designed to show output from the Omni-Cam, a subsea omni-directional camera system with 6 cameras, or to create synthetic images generated from a computer graphics program. This proceedings article describes the system design, construction, and control software. As an example of its use, preliminary responses elicited from the animals in response to the visual environment are described.