Robots driven by cockroaches
University of California, Irvine graduate student Garnet Hertz has come up with a novel solution for how to control a robot using something other than artificial vision and AI: he put a cockroach at the wheel. The bot works simply by shining a light at the cockroach when it gets near an object, which then causes the cockroach to change direction, but in a much less predictable manner than what AI normally produces. Garnet says, however, that he is not receiving military funding for the project and he also assures us that the cockroaches are not hurt in the process. And in case you want to build your own robo-roach army, he even tells you where you can get some cockroach pilots of your own.
[Via Collision Detection]
