Blub the Goldfish Drives Tiny Car, Sets Guinness World Record Using Motion Technology
You read that right. A goldfish named Blub just set an official Guinness World Record — by driving a motion-sensing vehicle across a television studio in Milan, Italy.
The little fish traveled 12.28 meters (40 ft 3.46 in) in just 60 seconds, more than doubling the minimum five-meter distance required to break the record for greatest distance covered in a motion-sensing vehicle by a goldfish in one minute.
Any direction counted, including reverse. And yes, Blub did it all by simply swimming around.
The vehicle is the invention of Thomas de Wolf, a computer engineer from the Netherlands who apparently looked at his day job and thought: what if I made a goldfish the world’s most unlikely driver?
The setup works like this: A water tank sits on top of the vehicle with the goldfish inside. A motion-sensing camera system tracks the fish’s movements. When Blub swims in a given direction, the camera detects it, and the vehicle moves that same direction.
The system requires a bright red fish for accurate motion tracking — and Blub, an Italian goldfish, was ideal for that reason.
“Normally my job is quite monotonous, so I wanted to create something that would entertain people, turning my ‘serious’ job into something fun,” de Wolf told Guinness.
The Record-Breaking Moment
The official attempt took place on the Italian TV show Lo Show Dei Record in Milan, with Guinness World Records adjudicator Sofia Greenacre overseeing the proceedings.
The distance was calculated by a surprisingly analog method: counting how many times a colored mark on each wheel touched the ground as the vehicle rolled.
The studio audience cheered Blub on as the fish navigated the vehicle across the floor.
Show presenter Gerry Scotti summed up the moment as “very sweet and very futuristic” — which might be the most accurate two-word review of a fish driving a car that anyone could offer.
The record was officially awarded to both de Wolf and Blub.
Serious Tech, Unserious Packaging
What makes this more than just an absurd stunt is what de Wolf says he’s actually trying to demonstrate. The invention is meant to show that technology doesn’t always have to be “serious” to be innovative.
“The objective is to show people what is possible to achieve with this kind of technology, even when it’s not necessarily something ‘serious,’” he told Guinness.
De Wolf created the project to make his work more fun and entertaining and to show what’s possible with this type of motion-sensing technology.
And there’s a potentially meaningful application buried beneath the spectacle: the concept could potentially be adapted to help people with mobility issues.
A World Record Title — and an Awkward Conversation
After the record was confirmed, de Wolf couldn’t resist the obvious joke about his co-record holder.
“How am I going to explain to Blub now that he has a world record title?” de Wolf joked.
Blub, for his part, controlled the vehicle through nothing more than natural swimming movements — no training, no commands, just a fish doing what fish do, and a clever camera system translating that motion into forward progress.
The whole thing raises a question that’s hard to shake: If a goldfish can drive a car 40 feet in a minute, what else might be possible when engineers stop worrying about whether an idea sounds ridiculous?
In Blub’s case, the answer was a Guinness World Record, a cheering studio audience, and one very confused fish.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
