Researchers Are Studying Mice in VR With a Tiny, Raspberry Pi-Powered Headset - ExtremeTech

Dr. Chris Schaffer and Dr. Nozomi Nishimura, 2 professors of biomedical engineering astatine 1 of New York’s astir prestigious universities, person created a VR setup that allows them to survey rodents’ reactions to virtual experiences. Though the nonstop intent of this probe appears to beryllium nether wraps, the duo says it’s a neuroscience project, which is connected par with the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab’s emblematic country of study.

The setup is humbly powered by a Raspberry Pi 4, chosen for its accessibility and single-board simplicity. The Raspberry Pi runs the escaped and open-source video crippled motor Godot, which Schaffer and Nishimura utilized to make virtual scenes. Because your mean VR headset is evidently acold excessively ample for a mouse’s tiny face, the researchers 3D printed customized show eyepieces and a lawsuit to support the carnal components together. Each eyepiece contains a 240×210 circular show and a Fresnel lens positioned 15 millimeters from the mouse’s look to supply an immersive 140-degree vertical and 230-degree horizontal tract of view.

To marque the acquisition interactive, the researchers acceptable up a spherical styrofoam treadmill that allows the rodent to determination successful immoderate direction. As the rodent locomotes connected the treadmill, the sphere’s question is captured by optical sensors and an Arduino Due, which converts the question information to thing the Raspberry Pi tin usage to make camera changes successful the virtual scene. The effect is simply a VR satellite that moves successful accordance with the mouse’s steps successful the existent world.

The virtual scenes themselves look to vary. One is simply a virtual cliff avoidance scene, which involves a checkerboard landscape with mendacious drop-offs. The researchers’ GitHub page besides mentions “looming stimuli” of assorted sizes and the carnal question effect to gratings of assorted spatial wavelengths.

GitHub doesn’t notation thing astir biologic sensors, meaning it’s improbable Schaffer and Nishimura are investigating the cardiovascular oregon hormonal responses to what perchance dependable similar fight-or-flight inputs above. A tweet from Matt Isaacson, a postdoc moving successful the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab, lone states the task relates to “mouse neuroscience/behavior” on with a little video of the VR setup successful action. As for now, it looks similar we’ll person to hold to find retired what precisely these tech-savvy mice are getting up to.

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