After training, the rodents began to fight demons.
Recently, the creator of the Rats Play Doom project spoke about the successes. It was possible to reach the next level — now rodents can shoot in the shooter.
Rats were trained to play DOOM II using a VR setup: a curved AMOLED provides a 180-degree horizontal and 80-degree vertical viewing angle, with Full HD resolution.
Headset:
In addition to this, the system includes:
- «rotating ball» — an analogue of a treadmill, used to track movements.
- «trigger» — a lever that allows the rat to shoot (in the game).
- For successful actions, the rats were rewarded with sugar water, which was supplied by a metering mechanism. Rewards were synchronized with game events.
ViZDoom was used for the experiment, controlled via a «PC + Raspberry Pi microcomputer» bundle.
The blog provides a description of the results:
Rats have successfully learned to navigate the virtual environment and trigger the firing mechanism. Habituation took approximately two weeks for each rat. Although advanced training was not completed due to time constraints, initial data showed promising interaction with the system.
Lever:
