Scientists have developed the smallest virtual reality goggles for mice for a better understanding of animal behaviour in VR.
According to Sky News, researchers from Cornell University made the MouseGoggles with the help of low-cost, off-the-shelf components like tiny lenses and smartwatch displays.
The lead author of the study, Matthew Isaacson, said, “When we tried this kind of a test in the typical VR setup with big screens, the mice did not react at all. But almost every single mouse, the first time they see it with the goggles, they jump. They have a huge startle reaction. They really did seem to think they were getting attacked by a looming predator."
As per Cornell University, the goggles will help in learning about how the brain works with spatial navigation and memory to understand diseases like Alzheimer's and find their potential treatments.
Isaacson believes, “It definitely benefitted from the hacker ethos of taking parts that are built for something else and then applying it to some new context. The perfect size display, as it turns out, for a mouse VR headset is pretty much already made for smartwatches.”
The researchers said that they were lucky that they did not have to design and build everything from scratch, as most of the components they needed in the making of the watch were already available in the market.
