Remember that DARPA initiative from a few years back to
create cyborg insects? With funding from the agency, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have managed to control a rhinoceros beetle via radio signals, demonstrated in a flight test shown on video at this week's IEEE MEMS 2009 conference. A module placed on the arthropod uses six electrodes affixed to the brain and muscles to commandeer its free will. The device weighs 1.3g -- much less than the 3g payload these guys can handle, and with enough wiggle room to attach sensors for surveillance. Ultimately, scientists say they want to use the beetle's own sensors -- namely, its eyes -- to capture intel and its own body energy to power the apparatus. Keep an eye on this one, we expect it to play a major role in the impending
robots vs. humans war.
[Thanks, Mimosa]
posted Jan 29th 2009 3:02AM
damn :(
Creepy -- I say
Scientists now aim to use human's own sensors -- including, but not limited to, their eyes -- to capture intel and their own body energy to power the apparatus. Keep an eye on this one, we expect it to play a major role in the impending humans vs. humans war.
Scared yet? That's the future they aim for, those scientists.
Big, bad Beetleborgs....
interesting. the borg actually began as a race of insect-cyborgs, not humanoid ones as previously thought.
Now if I could put one on my wife to make her do the house work and get me a beer we would have something there. ;) did I say that?
Should have that biyatch in check anyway! Don't need any chips! I kid, I kid. Not a bad idea sir.
Perhaps she could "chip" you into getting off the couch/computer and actively participating in a relationship. This includes doing the housework - together. She is probably the cleaner one out of the pair of you, so perhaps you should do all the cleaning yourself.
Teh US military can get away with spending money on questionable/creepy research, cuz its 4 the defens of freedumb!
Gee, i need an army of those, with the right programming I could make them clean up my apartment and dispose of my neighbours dog.
Can't wait till I can slap a few of these of these on a bunch of woodland creatures and recreate that Open Season movie.
Isn't the whole purpose of using these to spy on people, to make it so you can't immediately tell they're "Bugged" ;)
Fail imo, miniaturization has a long way to go yet.
Ever hear of a prototype? Or an experiment? GTFO
Poor little fella. Did someone ever asked the beetle if he wanted to be hacked? By the way, even if equipped with lasers, does anyone care that this mutilated weapon can be stopped with insecticides?
Not if you manage to replace all the neural tissue with cheap electronics from taiwan.
I think they did ask the beetle if they could hack it... granted that may have been after they had control of its brain....
this is by far one of the coolest things i've heard about in a while. expecially the part about using the beetle to power the electronics and its eyes as the optical sensors. this is great news.
this is starting to dance on the boarder of whether or not this is/isnt ethical.
Somebody call People for the Ethical Treatment of Bugs.
ethical research is for losers anyway.
seriously though, this scares me to no bounds.
I love science and technology, and this is disgusting. Utterly disgusting.
I don't think lasers will be the biggest threat- more likely explosives and/or bioweapons. I have no idea what 1.5g of concentrated explosive can do, but I could definitely see these things becoming the high-tech assassins for high-profile people eventually.
I'm gonna stock up on bug spray and fly swatters, and maybe move to Alaska or somewhere else with a high cold/bug ratio.
if one were to land on the back of your neck and explode. im sure it would do some damage.
what if they were to do it with mosquitos? they could give the mosquito a virus and have it infect select people..
I for one welcome our new zombie cyborg beetle overlords.
Do you have a problem with swatting an annoying little fly? I'm just saying, if you have no qualms about killing and mutilating insects, then it's pretty hard to call this tech immoral, isn't it?
ON THE OTHER HAND... if you follow my line of thought to its logical conclusion, you start to see how this might be slippery ground. After all, if you also don't see the act of shooting and killing a deer for sport as immoral, then you should have no problem with the idea of wiring some electrodes to that deer's brain and using it as a remote-controlled cyborg spy. But this is where it gets really disturbing: if taking a human life is moral when justified by war, then perhaps one could rationalize that, as a tactic in war, it might therefore also be moral to take over an enemy soldier's mind and, say, force the soldier to kill his friends and comrades. One might even reason that, if it reduces overall casualties, then doesn't that in fact make such an action good?
Frankly, I'm not sure where we ought to draw the line; I just know where it starts to get creepy. And overriding the mind of a living, thinking being, no matter what its level of sophistication and intelligence, is indeed a creepy idea.
(Carl Jenkins physically probes the bug's brain)
Carl: It's afraid. It's afraid.
i have to agree with you, where is the line, WHERE?
THERE is the line, and they're already passing it.
One thing is to kill, and another thing is to control against free will. When you kill them, they either rest pacefully forever or go into another dimension or just stop feeling pain, depending on your beliefs. I want to take the third one for granted, since I think it's a fact that there is no pain on a dead mind
That said, would you rather:
X. Die quickly and with a very short period of pain
-or-
Y. Be controlled against your free will, used as a machine (potentially to kill other beings, potentially humans), and feel a lot of pain you're not guilty for and without any way to escape?
This applies the same way for any animal (including humans)... Any being, actually (aliens too)
Johnny Rico will blast those bugs to hell!!!
PETA is going to have a party.
I think PETA cares about the chordate phylum more than the others.
Still, I don't know why this is creepy. It's just saving time and energy that would be put into making total robot bugs. I'm sure the bug's friends and family don't care about it...
These are big a***d bugs. They are somewhat bigger than the oval surrounding Washington on the $1.
probably quite a bit bigger
i used to have rhino beetles as pets when i was really young (dont ask why)
but they were close to two inches long
the stag beetles i kept were way bigger
and woah this is so creepy thinking about them being cyborgs
Figures UC Berkley would come up with something like this.
Video throught the bug's eyes? Bugs don't fly in straight lines. How nausea-inducing would that video be? It would be far worse than the most hallucinogenic video out there. Imagine it in IMAX..... [shudder]
A Bug's Life, the live-action version!
pew pew and another pew
Reminds me of Lexx. Flying it would be cool, but I really want Zev, the love slave.
Creepy, yes. I doubt the use of the eyes as sensor will happen any time soon, though. Using some electrodes to control basic movements is infinitely less complicated.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/japanese-researchers-create-images-from-thoughts-using-thoughts/
Creepy or no, it begs the question: what human thought, "Oh I know, let's control the actions of an animal and use it for our own surveillance purposes?" I think that, for me, is the weirdest part.
That would be Luc Besson, writer of the fifth element
commandeer its free will? shouldn't the christian right be up in arms against this, what with free will being god-given and all?
It's got no free will, just like the rest of us.
Insecticons- TRANSFORM!
How do they debug it?
Ha
Nice
This sounds more like something from the Dharma Initiative than froma DARPA Initiaitive.
if it hasn't been coined already I am proclaiming these "Cybugs" and I personally know of research into growing mega sized bugs in high O2 environments. Combine that with this, http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/qYkKz9oYfLk/article.pl and we are all doomed.
Hmm...I would have gone with "Cybersects" but that sounds too much like the favorite pasttime of many an Engadget reader.
Yours is win.
I don't think I'm the only one who sees a serious reference to The Fifth Element here. Bugs crawling around, remote controlled with sensors? It seems the movies really do predict the future.