Rodent Arena Tracker (RAT)

Jonathan Krynitsky and colleagues from the Kravitz lab at Washington University have constructed and shared RAT, a closed loop system for machine vision rodent tracking and task control.

The Rodent Arena Tracker, or RAT, is a low cost wireless position tracker for automatically tracking mice in high contrast arenas. The device can use subject position information to control other devices in real time, allowing for closed loop control of various tasks based on positional behavior data. The device is based on the OpenMV Cam M7 (openmv.io), an opensource machine vision camera equipped with onboard processing for real-time analysis which reduces data storage requirements and removes the need for an external computer. The authors optimized the control code for tracking mice and created a custom circuit board to run the device off a battery and include a real-time clock for synchronization, a BNC input/output port, and a push button for starting the device. The build instructions for RAT, as well as validation data to highlight effectiveness and potential uses for the device are available in their recent publication. Further, all the design files, such as the PCB design, 3D printer files, python code, etc, are available on hackaday.io.

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications.  RRID:SCR_021408