The Abovemarine

Over the course of a few weeks, [Adam] trained his betta fish, [Jose], to jump out of the water to snatch food off his finger. An impressive display for a fish, but being able to train his small aquatic friend got [Adam] thinking. What’s stopping [Jose] from interacting his environment even more? The abovemarine was born.

The abovemarine is a robotic platform specifically built for [Jose]’s aquarium. Below, three omni wheels drive the entire aquarium in any direction. A computer running OpenCV, a webcam, and a few motors directs the abovemarine in whatever direction [Jose] wants to go. Yes, it’s a vehicle for a fish, and that’s awesome.

[Adam] put a lot of work into the creation of the abovemarine, and was eventually able to teach [Jose] how to control his new home. In the videos below, you can see [Jose] roaming the studio and rolling towards the prospect of food.

Because [Jose] is a Siamese fighting fish and extremely territorial when he sees other males of his species, this brings up the idea of a version of Battlebots with several abovemarines. They’re in different tanks, so we don’t know what PETA would think of that, but we do expect it to show up in the Hackaday tip line eventually.

48 thoughts on “The Abovemarine

    1. The name “supermarine” is taken by the Supermarine Spitfire. If he’d used that name there’d be a zillion comments bitching that they came in expecting an airplane and were disappointed.

      1. obviously the next step is to develop a drone with an onboard aquarium and let the fish fly. then it could be called Supermarine. I don’t recommend equipping it with armaments, however.

    1. These acronym-benders are why I switched to “People against the Unethical Treatment of Animals”. As a bonus they don’t toss the excess of cute saved puppies into the next landfill, very much unlike *some* other more-known organizations.

  1. Two thoughts:

    1) That poor fish is going to get car sick.

    2) Can you make one for my house? Perhaps my rolling around in bed could drive the house to the grocery store or work or where ever…

    1. I dunno, when it moves towards his finger it seems to be responding to outside stimuli.
      Of course, we dont know how much editing or takes it took.

      But at face value Id say the fish is at the very least responding to the movement.
      Next step I guess is try to have a “feeding area” and see if it can be trained to move to it.

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