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Teaching Rats to Drive Tiny Cars

241 points| tosh | 6 years ago |newscientist.com

103 comments

order
[+] hyperpallium|6 years ago|reply
The story is not rats driving cars. This story is not that rats in enriched environments acquire driving skills more quickly.

The story is that learning to drive relaxes rats.

[+] intenex|6 years ago|reply
"Just like us humans, learning to drive and navigate seemed to have a relaxing effect on the rats. In a control experiment, they found rats had higher levels of cortisol when being driven around in remote-controlled cars than when they were allowed to steer themselves."

From the futurism post https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-rats-drive-tiny-car...

Seems like a terrible control imo for me to say driving intrinsically has a relaxing effect. A better control would be rats doing nothing vs rats driving and seeing if the rats doing nothing were more stressed than the driving rats, meaning the driving rats were actually lowering their baseline stress.

In this experiment the control of being a passenger in a terrifying vehicle moving all by itself with no autonomy or control over the situation can quite likely be the thing causing elevated stress, rather than rats driving depressing levels of stress. Imagine if someone suddenly strapped you into a bubble that started moving by itself and you have no idea why this is happening, no control over the situation, or where you're going or what's going to happen to you. Stressful af. Hell, people get stressed just being in the passenger seat watching someone else drive.

The vast majority of people prefer having autonomy and control over their own motion vs being helplessly navigated by someone else you don't know/trust with zero context and no idea what's going on. A little misleading if this reflects the actual study.

[+] ajna91|6 years ago|reply
Furthermore, the rats that lived in enriched environments drove for the joy of driving, whereas the standard caged rats only drove for the food rewards.

"As hypothesized, the animals living in the enriched environment performed better at the driving test, indicating that they did a better job at learning a new complex skill. The enriched rats also maintained a strong interest in the car, even after the reward of food was removed.

On the other hand, the researchers were surprised at the lack of interest shown by the non-enriched rats and their level of underachievement shown in the driving task. "

[+] ChuckMcM|6 years ago|reply
Until they put the rats in rush hour traffic, then see how relaxed they are :-)

This was a really a fun paper, I'd love to see it reproduced. Perhaps they could compare mice behavior to rat behavior, although given their size it might be more interesting to train a mouse to ride a tiny motorcycle.

[+] baby|6 years ago|reply
I took my first driving lesson on an automatic today, and it was kind of a surreal out of body experience. I felt like I was playing a video game. Maybe because I could control something that was moving the world around me?
[+] aptwebapps|6 years ago|reply
Reminds me of the chapter of Blink where Gladwell delves into the correlation between a doctor's bedside manner / tone of voice and the likelihood of them being sued for malpractice. The whole thesis of the chapter seems to be that people are more willing to sue docs who are less nice, and then at the end he says if you don't like your doc, your intuition is probably right!
[+] pubby|6 years ago|reply
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DINEwuxbI-E
[+] dmcdm|6 years ago|reply
Not gonna lie, pretty much the only reason I clicked the article was to see a video of rats driving tiny cars.
[+] callesgg|6 years ago|reply
I just want to complain about them continuously helping the rat.

Backseat drivers.....

[+] jansan|6 years ago|reply
I was just about to complain about the missing video link. Thanks!
[+] kwhitefoot|6 years ago|reply
Thank you, that brought it to life much better than the article even though, of course, the article had a lot more background information.
[+] eeZah7Ux|6 years ago|reply
Please link to a better video.
[+] fouc|6 years ago|reply
Scaling that up to rats driving your "self-driving" car, I don't think I'd feel safe with less than 5 rats and a consensus mechanism in-place.

Perhaps some of these rats could even be replaced with sensors and Machine Learning. Just imagine the possibilities

[+] kwhitefoot|6 years ago|reply
If the rats are able to communicate with each other then I think you might find the consensus would not necessarily be in your favour.

What happens if you get allocated five 'teenage' rats who just love pushing your Tesla to its limits! I mean it's scary enough when it's just me and the Autopilot on the autobahn at 240 km/h.

[+] mattkevan|6 years ago|reply
Why bother with all that trouble of teaching computers to drive by themselves, when you could just get some rats instead?

I would love to see fleets of rat-piloted quadcopters delivering parcels, or to grab a ride in a rat-taxi.

Plus, considering you’re never more than 6 feet away from a rat, the convenience would be off the charts.

[+] Jun8|6 years ago|reply
To make this idea more concrete: why not use the brain of the rat (or any similar animal) in place of the NN, I.e. remove the brain in embryo stage and train it with visual stimuli relevant to the problem to be solved.

I’d wager that a rat brain would be more powerful than any state of the art AI systems in solving complex tasks such as this. How to sustain it biologically and train using optical paths are complex problems but I could be easier than training the animal and much more scalable: make NN layers with these brain-based nodes.

[+] Wowfunhappy|6 years ago|reply
Well, much like a service dog (or a horse!), you'd have to train the rat, and feed it, and change its cage. It would be less expensive to care for than those larger animals for sure, but still a hassle.

Interesting world to imagine though!

[+] excalibur|6 years ago|reply
You did see how often the rats drove into the wall, right?
[+] Asooka|6 years ago|reply
I don't think it would work. Aside from the ethical questions, I'm not aware of animals being used to perform complex tasks without human supervision and care. And if you have the human in there, you don't need a rat.
[+] Iv|6 years ago|reply
I remember a short-story where a cat learns to pilot a customized glider. It has always made me wonder about the plausibility of it. Were I not allergic to cat, I would probably have built a customized controller for a roomba and see if they are interested in learning to drive it.

I really wonder how far animals can in tool usage if we were to build custom-designed ones for them.

[+] actaeon169|6 years ago|reply
I really feel like we should be teaching them how to ride little bicycles or take public transportation instead.
[+] interfixus|6 years ago|reply
Not really surprising. From what I have seen of rats, they are very good at spatial perception and physical manipulation of their environment, where they easily outperform most cats and dogs I have had the pleasure of knowing. A smart rat clearly enjoys exploration and challenge, and likes to be in control - it would appear more unexpected if these joyrides didn't relax them.
[+] kylepdm|6 years ago|reply
Shoo-in for the Ig Nobel
[+] bredren|6 years ago|reply
If this interests you, you may want to read Robert Sullivan’s Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants.

It is all about rats and made me much more appreciative of them. Now when I see one I think about what it’s doing and why.

The book also has some interesting stuff about US history.

[+] henearkr|6 years ago|reply
Wow! Let's train them a little bit more then put them in Formula-E race cars on a circuit :D
[+] noonespecial|6 years ago|reply
Forget that. I'd pay to see rat drone racing. Especially if it turned out that practiced rats flying local could often beat humans flying remote.
[+] mellosouls|6 years ago|reply
...Helps Them Relax, Scientists Discover

"Article was about more mundane stress relief experiment than title led me to believe" grumbled one HN reader. "I felt cheated."

[+] m23khan|6 years ago|reply
This is pretty cool. Reminds me of a movie I saw in early 1990s as a kid where there are rats who drive toy cars. If only I could remember the name!
[+] GGfpc|6 years ago|reply
Stuart Little?
[+] 14|6 years ago|reply
I see a lot of comments joking about rats driving Tesla's and maybe Uber could use them, obviously not but are there any real world application where this could possible be useful? The one I came up with was rats in a crop driving little solar powered 4x4 machines around pulling out weeds. Any other thoughts on how these could realistically be used?
[+] kwhitefoot|6 years ago|reply
The researchers should set up a company making the vehicles for sale. In various size perhaps for different animals.