The code and data for the paper are in github:
<a href="https://github.com/jnirody/waterbears/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jnirody/waterbears/</a><p>Much of the technical work (building the data collection rig, collecting image data and turning it into processed tabular data) is straightforward and could be done by hobbyists (well funded and motivated hobbyists). For example, a lot of the gait tracking would be straightforward using DeepLabCut. You need to label about 200-300 images to make a decent model to track tardigrade gait, so just farm the job out to friends and family ("hello, could you label tardigrade limbs for me?" works quite well).<p>The imaging parts of this work aren't that complicated either (I am personally not interested in the "science" part of the paper as I am in the imaging tech). It's just a simple microscope. One could have all sorts of fun with computer vision and microscopic organisms (like bdelloid rotifers which are even cooler than tardigrades imho).