Goldfish drives own car thanks to Dutch computer engineer’s record-breaking invention

A goldfish could be your next Uber driver, thanks to a computer engineer’s revolutionary invention.

Thomas de Wolf (Netherlands) made a unique car that contains a water tank and is directed by the movements of the goldfish inside it. It earned him and Blub, the Italian fish, a record title for the greatest distance covered in a motion-sensing vehicle by a goldfish in one minute, with a whopping 12.28 m (40 ft 3.46 in).

Thomas, who attempted the record on the set of our Italian TV show Lo Show dei Record in Milan, said: “Normally my job is quite monotonous, so I wanted to create something that would entertain people, turning my 'serious' job into something fun.”

Thanks to its motion-sensing camera, every time Blub moves to one side of the tank, the car moves in that direction, so in a way, it really is like Blub is driving the car.

According to Thomas, “the objective is to show people what is possible to achieve with this kind of technology, even when it’s not necessarily something 'serious'.”

However, as show presenter Gerry Scotti pointed out, hopefully this kind of technology could be used in the future to assist people with physical impairments. 

“I would love to maybe one day be able to help people with mobility issues,” Thomas agreed.

The record-breaking vehicle only works with bright red fish, so that the camera can properly catch its movements – which made little Blub the ideal candidate for this attempt.

To successfully break the record, the goldfish needed to cover a distance of at least five metres within the time limit. Movement in any direction was valid, even in reverse – it’s not like Blub had anywhere he needed to be.

Scotti joked that the kids at home watching this will not ask for just any pet fish anymore, but they’ll specifically want a fish that can drive.

Read more stories about record-breaking inventions in our Science and Technology section.

Official Guinness World Records Adjudicator Sofia Greenacre was there to oversee the attempt and, in order to determine the exact travelled distance, she needed to count how many times the coloured mark on each wheel had touched the ground.

At the end of the attempt, Scotti commented: “I don’t know if it’ll be a world record, but we definitely saw something very sweet and very futuristic.”

In the end, the record was officially Thomas’s (and Blub’s), with a distance way longer than the required five metres.

After receiving his record certificate, Thomas thought out loud: “How am I going to explain to Blub now that he has a world record title?”

Congratulations, you are both Officially Amazing!