Fish on the slide

How do you weigh a live, wriggling fish? At the moment, fish farmers separate
the fish using a machine with different sized chutes, rather like a coin sorter.
But Emanuele Trucco of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh has developed a more
precise system that can work out the weight of a fish by taking digital
snapshots of it as it slides down a single transparent chute (Applied
Artificial Intelligence, vol 15, p 735). The system is calibrated by
photographing and weighing large batches of fish, allowing intelligent software
to work out the weight of a fish accurately just from its…