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Here's the First Crazy Thing You'll See This Year: Fish Can Now "Drive" Vehicles on Land

There's a time when you realize that technology is advancing at a much faster rate than we'd like to admit. Well, that time seems to be now. A team of scientists from Ben-Gurion University has tested the ability of goldfish to use a wheeled vehicle to navigate on land. Spoiler alert: the fish did great "driving" the vehicle and even avoiding dead-ends.
Fish navigating on land using a wheeled robot 6 photos
Photo: Ronen Segev on Twitter
Goldfish use small wheeled vehicle to navigate on landGoldfish use small wheeled vehicle to navigate on landGoldfish use small wheeled vehicle to navigate on landGoldfish use small wheeled vehicle to navigate on landGoldfish use small wheeled vehicle to navigate on land
Well, folks, it looks like 2022 is on to a great start. Seeing fish go from water to land, being perfectly capable of navigating a small robot isn't something you see every day. For this exciting project, the team of scientists made what they call a Fish Operated Vehicle (FOV), which is actually a wheeled platform designed to carry up a fish tank.

The small participants were tasked with driving the robot towards a target visually marked with a different color than the rest of the plain good ol' white walls. The sea creatures could see the target through the clear tank and navigate across a surface by simply using their body movement, sort of pushing in the direction they wanted to go.

A camera was placed above the tank to track the orientation, while Lidar sensors and a computer measured the exact distance between the fish and the target. To get motivated, the goldfish were given treats after completing the task, much like you'd usually see in a dog's training process, for example.

The results? Well, the small creatures were able to navigate on land, explore their surroundings and even avoid getting stuck in a corner. This just proves that animal behavior is much more complex than we thought.

You can see a video of the experiment down below as the team posted the results on Twitter. They also published a scientific paper that is available online for those who want to find out more details about the mechanism involved.

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About the author: Florina Spînu
Florina Spînu profile photo

Florina taught herself how to drive in a Daewoo Tico (a rebadged Suzuki Alto kei car) but her first "real car" was a VW Golf. When she’s not writing about cars, drones or aircraft, Florina likes to read anything related to space exploration and take pictures in the middle of nature.
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