The Thomas cylinder test system is a new fully integrated device for the automatic measurement and fast analysis of the classical “Schallert cylinder test”, typically used for investigating the exploratory and motor behavior of rodents or marmoset monkeys. Due to its highly sensitive surface, it will recognize and store every interaction of the animal (e.g. rearing, vertical progression, nose pokes, etc.) automatically on the connected PC. A time synchronized observation video will allow for a combination of these quantitative data with the qualitative behavior at any time. Data of all contact events with the cylinder barrel will be stored in an easily accessible xml-file for further analysis with all commonly used data evaluation software (e.g. MATLAB, R, etc.). 

This system will highly increase the quality of the experimental data and the speed for analyzing them, since experimenters are not required to perform a qualitative frame-by-frame analysis of the video recorded. Furthermore, the all-in-one solution will allow for a quick setup and high reproducibility between measurements.