Rats Play DOOM

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!

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.

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."

>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?

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 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.

How can he not include a video of it working? D:

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"

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.

Well, the most cyberpunk thing I have read today. No video of rats killing Daemons though, only a promising but broken link.

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

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.

For those afraid to click: This does not appear to hurt the rats or involve doing any surgery on them.

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>"

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

That's such a fun project. Some really excellent Show HN items this week, but this is my favourite.

Next, train squirrels to play Mirrors Edge.

People are fsc#ing insane. And I love it !!!

This isn't true of all rats

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.

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?

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