Requirements-driven automation of a social home-cage access-control system for rat cognitive testing.

BACKGROUND: Understanding cognition is essential for advancing treatments for human disorders. Rodent studies remain important for investigating underlying mechanisms. Traditional testing often involves handling, isolation and experimenter variability, which can reduce data quality. NEW METHOD: We present the automated Social RatPad, a home-cage access-control system enabling socially housed rats to reach touchscreen-based RatPad chambers without manual separation. The chamber presents stimuli, records responses and delivers pellets; this study validates the access-control and logging layer connecting it to a social home cage. The system combines monitored corridors, a modified One-rat turnstile, RFID identification and automated secondary gates. During passage, an Arduino receives the gate state and RFID result, samples a load cell and controls the secondary gate, while a separate program manages RFID assignments, communication, monitoring and logging. The load-cell station provides an auxiliary health-related signal. Hardware, reconstruction files, control software and validation scripts are provided as Supplementary Material. RESULTS: Of 58 human-confirmed corridor traversals, 57 had valid RFID read support (98.28%), and traversal-duration agreement was quantified across matched events. Deployment demonstrated ready corridor use and consistent generation of structured behavioral data. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: Compared with existing rat touchscreen and home-cage approaches, the system addresses controlled access in pair-housed rats while preserving individual attribution and reducing manual intervention. CONCLUSIONS: The automated Social RatPad supports continuous, low-intervention cognitive testing and provides a foundation for scalable behavioral neuroscience applications.