Development of rat training equipment without electrical stimulus

最近，出现了被称为“生活方式病”的健康问题。原因之一是缺乏锻炼。有必要用小动物来研究运动的效果。在跑步机上锻炼这些动物是很流行的。用电刺激使动物在跑步机上跑步。但这可能会使他们产生应激反应。所以我们开发了一种没有电刺激的老鼠训练设备，一种自愿的运动设备。该设备由三部分组成。1. 生活组件。2. 视频录制组件。3. 分析组件。分析组件利用了图像处理技术。结果显示，平均运动量、跑步距离在90米左右。这比通常的跑步机运动要少。分析成分可用于人体运动研究。我们证明了从该分量得到的运动数据估计心率等生理指标是可能的。

Recently, health problem is occurring named as life style sichness. One of the causes is lacking of exercise. It is necessary to investigate the effect of exercise using small animals. It is popular to make these animals on treadmills. Making animals run on treadmill, electrical stimulus is applied. But this may make them stress reaction. So we developed a rat training equipment without electrical stimulus, a kind of voluntary exercise equipment. The equipment is consisted of three components. 1. living component. 2. video recording component. 3. analyzing component. Analyzing component takes advantage of image processing technology. As for the results, average amount of exercise, running distance was about 90 m. This is less than usual treadmill exercise. Analyzing component can be used for human exercise study. We proved it is possible to estimate physiological index such as heart rate, from the data of the movement data obtained from this components.