You really should release parts as parametric or at least the source files. I see everything is an STL and STLs are just a pain to work with. Suppose we want to try with mice? Or what about my cat? I do not expect just scaling in my slicer is going to end up with a good result, I'll need to redo everything from scratch. But parametric parts? That gives us a lot faster iteration. That gives you a lot faster iteration too! I highly recommend taking that approach when designing and I find it is worth it more often than not.
Could you add cost estimates to the BOM? These never need to be accurate but I always find it helpful when estimating a project. You're just saving people from the time it takes to click every single link and throw them into a calculator. And informs people very quickly what to innovate on to drive costs down. (Sorry, BOMs without cost estimates are a big pet peeve of mine)
# Questions:
- Do the rats enjoy playing Doom?
- Are there specific games the rats like to play?
I've never thought about what types of videogames other animals would enjoy, but damn if you didn't just open Pandora's Box here. I actually think we could learn a lot about them (and even their specific personalities) from this question. It gives a whole other level of refinement than just knowing what my cat's favorite toys and games are...
And also, thanks for open sourcing this! I'm excited to see what comes of it!
Gonna be honest here, I've worked on this for so long, so many iterations, lots of versions for each 3D part, software and all, at this point I just wanted to publish everything I had and do it fast. And you are totally right, publishing without parametric source files was a mistake, I'll upload everything I have shortly, prices included. Note: mice require smaller setups and that just leads to the redesign of most parts - smaller ball, ball driver, lever with weaker springs... training cats prompts for a larger ball, same issue. VR setups for cats though would be super cool!
On this setup my rats were only habituated, they did not end up playing Doom. Even habituation seamed super slow, they were a year old when I started it. On the previous setup though, when they learnt to run on the ball and how that influences their reward, they got hooked. I believe they enjoy not just the reward, they get a sense of how their actions influence the game and they like that. They would run on the ball so much at some point they wouldn't even bother drinking all the juice and it was just dripping on the setup.
No idea what they would best like to play. It needs to be a first person game though, that's what they are able to understand how to handle, it's more natural to them.
Thank you for taking the time to give feedback! I also hope pet VRs become a thing and people can connect with their pets virtually too!
Is the graphics rendering modified to output actual barrel projection to match the display, or did you just take the original perspective projection and stick it on a distorted screen?
Consider making the screen panoramic around a larger radius rather than just around the head, perhaps on the order of ball diameter. This reduces the visual stereodisparity mismatch and lowers the cognitive load for habituation.
Consider also making the trigger chin- or bite-activated to allow simultaneous shooting and moving.
Oh, I hope you don't take this as me being upset. I'm super happy and totally get the motivation. I a fan of the adage "better to do something half assed than no assed" (not that this is half-assed). Just wanted to make the comment to help drive motivation and let you know there's a demand. Releasing the sources could really help too just so people don't have to work with the mesh.
But on the rat part, that is super interesting! I was suspecting they might not like Doom because shooting a gun might be such a foreign concept to them that it breaks immersion. But it seems like you say they like running around in the simulated environment? (Time for Cheeze-Doom? lol)
Again, super cool and thank for releasing things! This is that crazy stuff I just love to see people exploring.
Thank you! <3 On shooting: exactly that, it is so foreign to them, I doubt they could grasp the concept, but they can understand the loop of: pull lever -> audiovisual feedback of shooting with monster disappearing -> reward. Biting or scratching a surface as a form of attack may work better, but the audiovisual + reward response should help them to understand at what visual signals to pull the lever to make it go boom.
As an evolutionary cousin of a rat, the half-second delay after firing my weapon and the response would make me want to eat my whiskers.
This would completely kill any potential reward (and replace it with the opposite, frustration) you're trying to train me with, please fix immediately.
Lol you are correct! At least training them becomes smoother the faster you administer reward. Learning happens at different timescales in the brain, and immediate feedback (about <300 ms) yields the most reliable neural updates.
One of the most important traits of intelligence is understanding and appreciating delayed reward.
I saw a gambler win the jackpot. He was really excited and started gathering up all the chips he'd won. Why he was so excited to win a bunch of plastic chips, I'll never know. What's so great about plastic chips? Why was his brain so excited when all he was doing was gathering plastic chips? ...
A half-second delay doesn't mean your brain can't learn to make the precursor feel good.
I think that’s the same idea behind clicker training for dogs. There’s a delay in giving them the actual treat, but the instantaneous click sound lets them now they did the thing that results in a treat
The year is 2034. Countless attempts at re-producing the sophisticated wetware of the brain have failed. Modeling research has proved unfruitful, with the curse of dimensionality afflicting every attempt at breaking the walls of general intelligence. With only a few million of capital left, and facing bankruptcy, they knew that only one option remained.
i think its just people being out of touch with reality. perhaps engineering minds not thinking enough product. its too commonplace for me to even complain about. someone builds something primarily visual - a robot, a GUI application, etc. and links to their github/etc but they ensure that there are no visuals included.
This is far from primarily visual, but I do understand your point. I could not take videos unfortunately. I mentioned it in other places, but this project took so long, I just wanted to put it out there and get some feedback. I'm glad that people are this receptive to it, and I hope someone would take the project over!
>We reached the point of rat habituation but didn’t start training. Our rats (Todd, Kojima, Gabe) aged out before full testing. The setup works, but behavioral validation is pending.
Ah man, what a pity. That VR rig is awesome, but it doesn't really seem to me they are planning to continue these experiments, or do they?
How could you go to this amount of work and not continue??? Probably just waiting for other people to get mad at the lack of progress so that they attempt this themselves, and then he can challenge them to a deathmatch with his highly trainer ringer rats
When rats gaming championships become a thing, I will have the top team for sure!
Seriously though, this project took way too much time. We built 2 versions of the setup, lots of hardware, software building, testing. I hope a behavioral lab or hardware enthusiasts would take it over and scale it. I did learn a lot in the process and would gladly support anyone who would continue it. In fact, I have a setup now laying around in my living room up for the taking :D
Bad news: no video of them playing on this setup, just on the previous version. We iterated on v2 too long, our pet rats grew old and couldn't be trained. We open-sourced the hardware and software so others can build upon it. You can TLDR the whole thing in this thread: https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1996632980903620886?s=2...
...Also, here's my personal X, dm me if you have any questions, or would want to build it for a lab or for yourself: https://x.com/viktor_thoth
I was worried this was going to be one of the petri dish of neurons type things, but the reality of it was awesome. More gaming rigs for rats need to be developed - it looked like Todd was actually enjoying it, and you toned down the potentially scary bits in a good way.
Kudos for the experiment and giving your pet an awesome enriching environment!
<<< just to verify, yes, he is The Rat Coach. Reach him out if you want to build something cool.
(first post we made on the project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46151150 )
I did not expect this to be as thoughtful as it is. Kudos to the thought put into the setup and training. Building custom hardware for the rat is amazing.. I need something like this for my own setup.
Doom aside (very impressive), I love the concept of putting rats on a roller ball instead of in a wheel for exercise. It would be better on their backs.
It's more like locking humans up in the matrix. Note lines like "preventing it from leaving the apparatus" in the build guide. Would an ordinary gamer be restricted from exiting such a contraption?
I think it might be _unethical_ to not spread the joy of playing Doom for the first time? Though, I’m not entirely sure there’s been enough research done about the effects of violent video games in rat gamer populations.
We've been putting rats in skinner boxes for a lot longer than we've been subjecting human gamers to them. I'd be more worried about the health effects of all that sugar water.
Giving them slightly acidic water off-rig and normal water while playing is another option - not the best either. I opted for sugar in the end, because they didn't spend much time on the setup; but this should be reconsidered if they on-rig for hours daily.
I was very happy to see this. I’m fairly against live animal testing, but giving rats the joy of playing Doom??? I think I _may_ have to be OK with this.
Wonderfully crazy. Should the rats have multiple weapons at their disposal, which do they prefer? How many demons escape their fate? Are there videos of gaming sessions? So many questions!
yeah good point! we actually have air puffs for that. we extracted from DOOM when a wall is hit in-game. when that happens, the corresponding side puff activates.
So true! A little over fifty percent of the rat population would rather watch fox news and spend more time oiling up those weapons for when "it hits the fan".
Whats the fascination with Doom? I keep seeing running Doom on this and that and now Rats playing Doom. I mean ok, Doom runs on everything and now rats playing doom. So what?
Doom has some star power and is instantly recognizable to pretty much anyone, not just video game fans. Its engine is Free software that's easily adaptable to pretty much any input or output method. In this case Doom might also have made a better candidate than another first person shooter because you can't aim up or down in Doom, so there's no need to account for that in the rats' input.
Doom pioneered the FPS genre in the USA. So it has a cultural significance. I used to go to my friends house to play it. You deal with a whole range of aspects such as grapchics, sound, networking,.. Etc. So it's a fun challange for hackers to try to get it to work in the most strange of ways. In addition it's a simple goal (with a complex path). So it helps with the focus, and most importantly the fun programming challenges involved in making the game work.
one of the first widely known "3d" shooters. Doesn't require much in the way of hardware and there are lots of open source implementations , tools and mods for it. And it's a meme
# Suggestion:
You really should release parts as parametric or at least the source files. I see everything is an STL and STLs are just a pain to work with. Suppose we want to try with mice? Or what about my cat? I do not expect just scaling in my slicer is going to end up with a good result, I'll need to redo everything from scratch. But parametric parts? That gives us a lot faster iteration. That gives you a lot faster iteration too! I highly recommend taking that approach when designing and I find it is worth it more often than not.
Could you add cost estimates to the BOM? These never need to be accurate but I always find it helpful when estimating a project. You're just saving people from the time it takes to click every single link and throw them into a calculator. And informs people very quickly what to innovate on to drive costs down. (Sorry, BOMs without cost estimates are a big pet peeve of mine)
# Questions:
- Do the rats enjoy playing Doom?
- Are there specific games the rats like to play?
I've never thought about what types of videogames other animals would enjoy, but damn if you didn't just open Pandora's Box here. I actually think we could learn a lot about them (and even their specific personalities) from this question. It gives a whole other level of refinement than just knowing what my cat's favorite toys and games are...
And also, thanks for open sourcing this! I'm excited to see what comes of it!
On this setup my rats were only habituated, they did not end up playing Doom. Even habituation seamed super slow, they were a year old when I started it. On the previous setup though, when they learnt to run on the ball and how that influences their reward, they got hooked. I believe they enjoy not just the reward, they get a sense of how their actions influence the game and they like that. They would run on the ball so much at some point they wouldn't even bother drinking all the juice and it was just dripping on the setup.
No idea what they would best like to play. It needs to be a first person game though, that's what they are able to understand how to handle, it's more natural to them.
Thank you for taking the time to give feedback! I also hope pet VRs become a thing and people can connect with their pets virtually too!
Consider making the screen panoramic around a larger radius rather than just around the head, perhaps on the order of ball diameter. This reduces the visual stereodisparity mismatch and lowers the cognitive load for habituation.
Consider also making the trigger chin- or bite-activated to allow simultaneous shooting and moving.
But on the rat part, that is super interesting! I was suspecting they might not like Doom because shooting a gun might be such a foreign concept to them that it breaks immersion. But it seems like you say they like running around in the simulated environment? (Time for Cheeze-Doom? lol)
Again, super cool and thank for releasing things! This is that crazy stuff I just love to see people exploring.
And here's a thing I knew had to exist: a doom mod/level set on a moon made of cheese... https://youtu.be/XxdeUbE9kvw?si=_cpJQKuDy87BN7EP&t=10m20s
This would completely kill any potential reward (and replace it with the opposite, frustration) you're trying to train me with, please fix immediately.
I saw a gambler win the jackpot. He was really excited and started gathering up all the chips he'd won. Why he was so excited to win a bunch of plastic chips, I'll never know. What's so great about plastic chips? Why was his brain so excited when all he was doing was gathering plastic chips? ...
A half-second delay doesn't mean your brain can't learn to make the precursor feel good.
Similar to the rat knowing the sugar comes very shortly after the task.
"Bring me the rats."
Why?
Ah man, what a pity. That VR rig is awesome, but it doesn't really seem to me they are planning to continue these experiments, or do they?
Even if you're sort of like an alien abducting them for experiments.... if you offered me a sugar drip to play doom in VR, I'd be there
Great project btw!
Bad news: no video of them playing on this setup, just on the previous version. We iterated on v2 too long, our pet rats grew old and couldn't be trained. We open-sourced the hardware and software so others can build upon it. You can TLDR the whole thing in this thread: https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1996632980903620886?s=2...
...Also, here's my personal X, dm me if you have any questions, or would want to build it for a lab or for yourself: https://x.com/viktor_thoth
Kudos for the experiment and giving your pet an awesome enriching environment!
This could give a whole new meaning to "the rat race"
Check out Shadow The Rat on YouTube; she has a whole series on training them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEXefdbQDjw
hehe very important
although... if the walls moved and touched the whiskers in conjunction with the game could be something
also nice to see those classic cheap blue stepper motors ha