enhanced pet mobility Archives

Fish on Wheels at Van Abbemuseum during Dutch Design Week

October 8, 2014/in In The Media, Studio diip News /by diip

As part of the exhibition Sense Nonsense our Fish on Wheels will be on display at the Van Abbemuseum. The exposition is a collaboration between the museum and the Design Academy Eindhoven and is also part of the Dutch Design Week 2014.

The exhibition is described as follows: “Through the exhibition Sense Nonsense at the Van Abbemuseum, Design Academy Eindhoven explores the inevitable relation between sense and nonsense, the interplay of sanity and insanity in innovation, and the role of the ridiculous and the absurd in liberating society and industry from the conventional wisdom that drives it.”

At the beginning of this year Fish on Wheels received quite some worldwide media attention. The device featured in many different TV shows, theaters and online media. This is the first time it is part of an official exhibition and open to the public.

If you’d like to see Fish on Wheels drive around be sure to stop by the Van Abbemuseum from the 18th of October till the 9th of November.

Fish on Wheels on Kickstarter today!

April 29, 2014/in In The Media, Studio diip News /by diip

Today the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.com has opened its doors to projects from the Netherlands. Because of the world wide success of our Fish on Wheels video we wanted to develop the fish car from the movie into a real product. Kickstarter projects are especially suitable for these kinds of innovative projects so we decided to make sure that we could launch our Fish on Wheels at exactly the moment that the website was open to project creators from the Netherlands.

Take a look at our project page and help us out by spreading the word, donating or buying your very own Fish on Wheels!

Fish On Wheels on TV

April 8, 2014/in In The Media, Studio diip News /by diip

Last Thursday Fish On Wheels was part of the Belgian TV show “Scheire en de Schepping“. The fish driving car was already recorded for the Discovery Channel and an interview appeared on BBC radio, but this was the first time the car was presented to a studio audience.

The show itself has some resemblance with the BBC’s program “QI” and is a mix of scientific questions, humor and interesting recent news items. Every episode features four TV personalities as contestants that have to score points by answering questions to be able to decide a winner in the finale. One of these rounds involves a guest that presents a certain invention. The contestants have to guess what the invention is, but the guest can only answer with yes, no or maybe.

In the ninth episode of the third season Thomas de Wolf of Studio diip presented Fish on Wheels, along with some other computer vision projects. You can watch the whole episode on YouTube or immediately see this specific part of the show below:

Fish on Wheels

February 10, 2014/in Studio diip News /by diip

“Fish on Wheels” has been developed so fish can steer their tank into a certain direction. Our pet fish have always been limited to their water holding area known as “the fish tank”. In an attempt to liberate fish all over the world, the first self driving car for fish has been developed. This car moves by detecting the fish’s position with computer vision. Up until now driving vehicles has been limited to mankind only (excluding a handful of autonomous vehicles driven by computers), but now your pet fish can also put the pedal to the metal.

A prototype version of “Fish on Wheels” has been constructed using a standard webcam, a battery powered Beagleboard and an Arduino controlled robot vehicle. Using the contrast of the fish with the bottom of the fish tank his position is determined and used to send commands to the Arduino for moving the car into that direction.

Hopefully this invention will encourage more development in enhanced pet mobility, so pet animals can travel the world more freely.