Goldfish can officially drive, better than most

7 Jan 2022

In their demonstration, Ben-Gurion University scientists managed to make a fish drive a tank with a computer and camera attached to the system. (Image Credit: Ben-Gurion University)

Oh, Goldie… if only you could have been mobile.

It seems like fish can now achieve the impossible: drive a specially designed tank. Scientists at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba demonstrated a fish's land-navigation capability, allowing six goldfish to drive a Fish Operated Vehicle (FOV) around a small room, heading to a reward. Overall, their experiments proved that the fish's navigation skills transfer from a marine environment to a terrestrial one.

The FOV contains a 40x40x19 cm chassis housing the platform that holds the water tank. Beneath the platform, four brushed DC motors connect to four OMNI wheels mounted on the metal frame's four sides. The team chose to fill the tank with 15 cm of water to keep surface waves low as the FOV moved. Then, they placed the fish in the tank that also features an attached camera and computer.

Video signals stream from the camera to the computer, performing segmentation and detection, allowing the fish to operate the vehicle. Fish facing toward the tank's wall caused the FOV to move in that direction. The team also needed to measure the vehicle's performance to categorize the FOV's response dynamics and precision. This was achieved by recording the vehicle's location after receiving commands to move forward.

One of their experiments involved setting the tank in the center of the room. From there, the goldfish navigated to a specific target, where it received pellet food as a reward. (Image Credit: Ben-Gurion University)

Various experiments were performed with the fish moving toward a specific area, where they received a food pellet as their reward. Even if the vehicle started at a different location in the room, the fish still found its target. At the same time, decoy targets, placed around the room, didn't trick the fish, and their performance improved throughout each session. In this case, most of the fish were able to locate the target in just under a minute compared to the thirty-minute mark when they first started.

Although the team claims to be the first to study domain transfer methodology in fish, they weren't the first ones who gave them the ability to explore the land. In 2014, scientists from the Netherlands created a similar device for goldfish to drive around a room. However, this project was intended to demonstrate computer vision capabilities.

Fish driver's licenses inbound.