I absolutely love this!
# 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!
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.
Anecdotally: Cats like fruit ninja.
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.
The colorful plastic chips work well enough to trick our dumb monkey brains, just like red notification bubbles.
You missed the point. The chips are exchanged for money shortly after. The brain knows this.
Similar to the rat knowing the sugar comes very shortly after the task.
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.
"Bring me the rats."
Douglas Adams would point out that this is just why the rats already trained us to play DOOM.
The mice, actually; the rats are never mentioned.
That I remember, but I have to work with the material I am given …
finally somebody gets it.
This is the coolest thing Ive seen in a long time. I wonder if we could use this to train squirrels to not get hit by cars.
I think there would be more money saved by making sure deer don't get hit by cars...
It's not about the money, it's about the squirrels!
>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
Seriously impressive work, and I do hope someone runs with the torch, it's always fascinating to see what our little rodent buddies are capable of.
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
How can he not include a video of it working? D:
That's the previous setup from four years ago, where the rats just run down a straight corridor.
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!
You built all this and saw a mouse rolling on a ball playing Doom, but didn't record it?
> I could not take videos unfortunately
Why?
At least there are 3d models of the dispositive and some pictures !
In the results section it looks like there's supposed to be an image of it but the link "placeholder_rat_playing.png" returns a 404 :(
I wonder if the team at id considered this when they released Doom: In 30 years rats will be forced to play it in exchange for sugar water.
I don't think they considered it, but I'm positive they would have found it absolutely hilarious
While everyone training AI, this man train a rat. Are you gonna release the open weights (or the rat)?
Great project btw!
Treat those rats well, now that you've trained them for combat.
Do the rats enjoy it and if so, will the rats teach other rats how to play?
This could give a whole new meaning to "the rat race"
Well, the most cyberpunk thing I have read today. No video of rats killing Daemons though, only a promising but broken link.
bUt liNk wOrks On mY cOmpUteR (seriously its not broken) ..but if so, check out this thread, tldr of the whole rodent VR setup: https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1996632980903620886?s=2...
Good news: Here's a cute video of Todd being habituated to the setup: https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1999598643339227564
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 )
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.
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.
Thank you, we really appreciate it! <3
For those afraid to click: This does not appear to hurt the rats or involve doing any surgery on them.
Is it ethical to turn rats into gamers?
It was tested on humans first
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.
10 microliter doses though. Pretty teeny tiny. But it is a valid concern.
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.
The trick is to save the treats till the end. They can learn to do a lot if they know they'll be rewarded later.
Check out Shadow The Rat on YouTube; she has a whole series on training them.
Gotta love Shadow!!!!
I mean-- how do you think they made gaming mice? :)
Gamers: no, hot-tub streamers: yes
I first read doing any sugary to them. Well, that's nice.
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.
“No animals were harmed in the making of this blog”.
The headset "maximizes immersion without obstructing whisker space" - nice!
checks notes I'm sorry, this doesn't qualify to run in the category "running DOOM on <device>"
Yet. 2035: running Doom on rat brains.
Growing Living Rat Neurons To Play... DOOM? | Part 1
Would fit right in with LLMs' recent HN front page predictions.
running rats on doom?
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!
How good are the rats and can we start using rats instead of bots? Get them gainfully employed.
No gameplay footage?
> It maximizes immersion without obstructing whisker space
hehe very important
although... if the walls moved and touched the whiskers in conjunction with the game could be something
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.
that's cool, I assume the sound doesn't scare the rat/does its purpose, sounds like a better solution than a physical wall moving
also nice to see those classic cheap blue stepper motors ha
That's such a fun project. Some really excellent Show HN items this week, but this is my favourite.
thx. :3 years of hard work. you might check out yolorun.capital for similar projects.
People are fsc#ing insane. And I love it !!!
This isn't true of all rats
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".
Next, train squirrels to play Mirrors Edge.
Living to Win (rat version)
Incoming site: Can It Play Doom?
I'm a little conflicted on the ethics of this ... but this would have made a kickass youtube channel.
Why? Unless you're against keeping pets in general, what's wrong with training your pet rat to play a video game?
Violent video gaming is especially good if it keeps them off social media. We know that's bad for them.
Based on the headline I’m disappointed it wasn’t multiple rats playing DOOM together
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 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.
Why do videos go viral? Why do memes become memes?
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