Experiment Proves You Can Teach Rats To Play DOOM II Using VR

Science Doom II Viktor Toth VR Rats Image Safe about 2 years agoby Anna Williams

Using VR for animals is being done more and more to help study cognitive function and to help with training them to do some overall impressive things. If you thought that pizza rat was impressive, wait until you hear about Viktor Toth’s Doom II playing rats. Toth taught 3 rats how to play Doom II using VR, and by play he means that the rats were able to navigate the maze-like levels of the game. He set up his tiny rodent rig by having a giant polystyrene ball for the rats to use their feet to navigate on. Then he set up a tiny harness for the rats and rewarded them with sugar water for doing well, and using puffs of air when they did things like run into walls. Eventually the rats were able to run through levels with one doing so well Toth was able to teach it how to shoot in game. You can read all about the experiment in Toth’s detailed blog post about it.

Could we teach rats how to play other games? How embarrassed would you be to lose to a rat at a video game?

Source: Nerdist