DOOM playing rats have evolved and can now shoot

Rats called Carmack and Romero, who have been taught how to play DOOM, have now learned how to shoot the in-game weapon via a new trigger mechanism.

DOOM playing rats have evolved and can now shoot
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Tech and Science Editor
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TL;DR: Rats named Carmack and Romero, previously trained to play DOOM, have advanced their skills by learning to shoot the in-game weapon using a new trigger mechanism. This breakthrough highlights innovative animal-computer interaction and cognitive training techniques in gaming environments.

Researchers have mapped the real-world movement of rats into DOOM, enabling these pesky rodents to move throughout the DOOM world and even fire in-game weapons.

The team explained that an entire VR setup was constructed from scratch to enable rats to play DOOM, and it involves a ball driver mechanism that the rats sit on top of, and when they move across the surface of the ball, the directional movement is input into DOOM. The first version of the setup featured minimal sensors and no panoramic screen, but the rats have received an upgrade in the form of upgraded sensors and a foldable AMOLED screen with 180 ° horizontal and 80 ° vertical FOV with Full HD resolution.

Additionally, the rats are now firing weapons within DOOM. As the researchers explain, the rats have the ability to pull a custom-built hand-operated lever that, when activated with one of their paws, fires a weapon in-game. Positive in-game actions trigger a liquid reward in the form of sugar water delivered through a precise dispensing mechanism. The results of this entire setup were that the rats successfully learned to navigate the virtual environment and trigger the shooting mechanism.

The habituation process took two weeks per rat, and following the experiment, the rats named Carmack and Romero, names that are nods to the creators of the original DOOM game, researchers can conclusively say that rats are capable of playing DOOM.