Doom: Trained rats Play Doom II in VR

The Hungarian neuroscientist Viktor Both has managed by means of a rodent VR setup, to teach three rats playing Doom II. The small four-legged friends managed to run along a corridor without support.

The aim of the project was to develop a VR system that teaches rodents to move in 3D environments without restricting them too much and needed without surgical procedures. Both hopes that his setup can facilitate similar experiments in the future.

As the neuroscientist reveals in conversation with Futurism, he plans to stream the gameplay of the rats over Twitch in the future, to give his project more attention and financial possibilities:

I think [the stream on Twitch is] a great way to monetize a project like this. The only problem is how long the rat runs.

I left [a rat named] Romero run once for 15 minutes, which was great. That was crazy because he did that for so long and did not get tired or stopped.

If you can actually bring the rat to a point where you really develop a curiosity for the game, it could be real interesting.

If you could get to this point and rats actually would be 10 or 20 minutes in a piece, play ', then Twitch Streaming would be a great way to imagine people.

For the future, Both plans further gaming experiments with its rats and dreams of teaching them 3D PAC-Man, which he themselves as difficult and very unlikely:

It makes sense from the behavior. The rats are not really attacking. They flee in the wild against things. That would be the dynamics with 3D PAC-Man. However, they would have to look behind to see if a ghost is behind them.

Of course, this setup is not realistic because the rat has to turn around [...] and it's quite complicated for the rat. That's why these doom-like ego shooter games just make more sense.

It's easy and fun to run the rats and shoot.