4 ms·
A fish that can steer its tank around the room
nice expression of embodiment
- billyjobob 13y agoIs the fish aware that it has control of the movement, or it just swimming in random terror?
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoThere's no positive feedback, so I doubt the fish will ever develop control over it.
- jlrubin 13y agoMore interesting would be a quad copter fish.
- rockolo 13y agoI tried once with a cockroach: http://rockolo.com/#aeroflux http://rockolo.com/#aeroflux
- altero 13y agoHow about quad copter cat? http://www.ohgizmo.com/2012/06/05/the-web-is-full-of-wtf-taxidermied-cat-turned-into-quadcopter/ http://www.ohgizmo.com/2012/06/05/the-web-is-full-of-wtf-tax...
- dhughes 13y agoBad fish! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvRQ4d76ZV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvRQ4d76ZV0
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- heydenberk 13y agoIt's probably not true but it seems like this would be a very happy fish.
- stcredzero 13y agoPut some caterpillar treads under that bad-boy and the tank can also be a tank! (Actually, that's where tanks got their name. The British WWI code words referred to them as "water tanks" to keep them out of the attention of spies.) I read somewhere that Survival Research Labs did something similar with a giant legged robot and a hamster, with the added feature of a flame thrower that went off whenever the hamster would squeak.
- malexw 13y agoThat's interesting, I didn't know about the "water tanks" code word. A fun bit of related trivia: those early WW1 tanks were piloted by navy sailors and, at least officially, were called "landships".
- jonnathanson 13y agoThis is undoubtedly some cool technology, but it seems traumatizing for the fish. I have no idea what degree of consciousness a goldfish has, but my guess is a) not enough to be aware it's controlling the movements, yet b) aware enough of the jostling and movement that it's highly panicked. The result is that it's flailing around frantically; its fight-or-flight mode is always engaged. So I'm a little conflicted here. Love the tech; concerned about the ethics.
- deelowe 13y agoThat's my thought as well. I can't help but think the poor fish is just trying to make the earthquake stop and in the process creating his own hell.
- adam12 13y agoI was thinking something like a smooth toy railroad track would be less traumatizing. The current design doesn't seem to let the fish just swim around without moving the car. There should be a slightly bigger area for the fish to swim and only make the car move when the fish is in a small area of the tank in the front or back. It would be interesting to have the track go into different areas/rooms with different colors or lighting to see if the fish spends more time in certain areas. That might shed some light on whether the fish is aware that it can control where the train/car goes.
- cjfont 13y agoI think part of the problem is that the steering is not responsive enough, and that might be preventing it from realizing it can control direction.
- Houshalter 13y agoIt should also probably move slower to keep it from jostling the fish around.
- pohl 13y agoThis takes walking into a room and forgetting what you came for to a whole new level.
- dep_b 13y agoI would like to see how the fish behaves in a bigger tank where there is a larger dead point in the middle where the cart doesn't move at all. If it still likes to explore around maybe it does like the experience. A few years ago I saw a cockroach on a trackball that controlled a similar vehicle. You could chase around by visual stimuli so in turn you would control the cockroach. It was a bit perverse but very interesting at the same time.
- kkl232 13y agoKlaus from American dad needs this so much! Not sure about regular fish though
- lewgus 13y agoShouldn't the headline be: A fish named wander
- aolol 13y agoSeems to take some inspiration from a similar device for a parrot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5N3-QtMdf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5N3-QtMdf8
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI think the concept is pretty neat, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing the inertial effects on the water should be contained (a lid would help there) and secondly the response time is way too high. But given the mechanism, its possible to do some really interesting fish intelligence studies. For example. set the cart to move very very slowly, so that basically the fish staying on the edge would move maybe 1 or 2 feet per minute. Second, use roller wheels so that the orientation of the tank stays the same regardless of direction, and only its position changes. Finally put different "scenes" around the room and see if the fish gets the tank to move over to the scene or not. Then I would be LED lamps at different parts of the room, when one was the target color if the fish moved the tank to it, it would drop food in the water and the light would turn off. Then another of the lamps would turn the target color. Could you train the fish to move the tank to the correct light color?
- baddox 13y agoAny idea how well a fish can see (and process/understand) outside its aquarium?
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoThe eyes vary with the adaptions of each species, but overall fish have a strong vision sense, similar to us. They can focus, have day and night vision (rods and cones), most see in color and some can see into the UV spectrum. So, in the vision department, fish are capable. I don't know how much a fish navigates the space based on vision alone (and I don't think it plays a big role, since visibility underwater is limited), but I know some from the Cichlidae family like the Oscar are able to recognize it's owner, which is quite a feat.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoNo, but after my experiments I would hope to be able to make some pretty definitive statements about that :-)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- theklub 13y agoOk, let's crowdsource one big enough for a dolphin, a couple million should be enough.
- coreymaass 13y agoAttach the fish to a Roomba! There goes the rest of my weekend...
- trumbitta2 13y agoI can see this kind of technology being developed towards a method for controlling "vehicles" while in a liquid capable of absorbing hits. Something like the LCL of Evangelion.
- edgeorge92 13y agoHas science gone too far?