Beaming into the Rat World: Enabling Real-Time Interaction between Rat and Human Each at Their Own Scale

Abstract

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) typically generates the illusion in participants that they are in the displayed virtual scene where they can experience and interact in events as if they were really happening. Teleoperator (TO) systems place people at a remote physical destination embodied as a robotic device, and where typically participants have the sensation of being at the destination, with the ability to interact with entities there. In this paper, we show how to combine IVR and TO to allow a new class of application. The participant in the IVR is represented in the destination by a physical robot (TO) and simultaneously the remote place and entities within it are represented to the participant in the IVR. Hence, the IVR participant has a normal virtual reality experience, but where his or her actions and behaviour control the remote robot and can therefore have physical consequences. Here, we show how such a system can be deployed to allow a human and a rat to operate together, but the human interacting with the rat on a human scale, and the rat interacting with the human on the rat scale. The human is represented in a rat arena by a small robot that is slaved to the human’s movements, whereas the tracked rat is represented to the human in the virtual reality by a humanoid avatar. We describe the system and also a study that was designed to test whether humans can successfully play a game with the rat. The results show that the system functioned well and that the humans were able to interact with the rat to fulfil the tasks of the game. This system opens up the possibility of new applications in the life sciences involving participant observation of and interaction with animals but at human scale.

Recommendations for Good Scientific Practice and the Consumers of VR-Technology

“…For example, it is plausible to assume that in the future there will be many experiments combining real-time fMRI and VR or ones using animal subjects in VR (Normand et al, 2012), which are not only about understanding or improving VR itself but only use it a research tool. To begin with a short example, Behr et al (2005) have covered the research ethics of VR from a practical perspective, emphasizing that the risk of motion sickness must be minimized and that researchers ought to assist subjects as they leave the virtual environment and readjust to the real world.…”

Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality

“…The same kind of beaming setup has been used to create a shared environment between a small animal and a human. Normand et al (2012b) showed a human participant in VR interacting with a virtual human, which in fact was a tracked rat in a cage 12 km away. Simultaneously, the rat interacted with a ratsized robot, which in fact was moving determined by the tracked the movements of the remote human.…”

Methodologies for animals’ geographies: cultures, communication and genomics

“…In a recent experimental combination of 'immersive virtual reality' with 'teleoperator systems', an interdisciplinary team facilitated an equal-scale encounter between humans and rats. 40 The human subjects were immersed in a virtual reality environment, where their movements were monitored, and in turn drove the movement of a rat-shaped and -sized robotic device; the rat-robot was then placed next to a living rat, whose movements were translated into that of a human-sized avatar in the virtual environment. Thus levelled, it is claimed that the human and the rat were able to participate in a purportedly playful meeting of species that seems straight from the pages of science fiction.…”