The sight of a cockroach scuttling
across the floor makes most of us shudder, but in a disaster, it may prove to
be our new best friends.
A new video from North Carolina
State University’s iBionics Laboratory shows how the laboratory enhanced
cockroaches could be steered with surprising precision.
The enhanced cockroach, a Biobot,
which is the short word for biological robot, is the first stage of creating
what could be called an insect cyborg.
According to Alper Bozkurt, an
assistant professor of the institute, it was not hard to perform surgery on a
cockroach as insect could be anesthetized by putting them in the fridge for a
few hours that the cold basically makes them hibernate.
Bozkurt said the use of tweezers
and a microscope also made the surgery simple.
The biobot has a rear electrodes as
well as a backpack for wireless control, the backpacks can carry a locator
beacon and a tiny microphone to pick up cries for help in the case of
earthquake.
“Of course, a human operator or
computer still has to be listening and steering them,” Bozkurt said that the
biobots could also carry a camera or any other kind of miniaturized sensor one
can imagine.
Bozkurt said the use of cockroaches
instead of synthetic robots which can be made from tougher materials is because
of their self-powered locomotion system and the ability to sense danger and run
for their lives. More than 10 biobots have been created so far from
cockroaches. The use of electric pulse, Bozkurt affirmed is to stimulate their
antenna sensor cells which will make them think that there is an obstacle to
navigate around.
In spite of the surgery on the
cockroaches, the assistant professor said the cockroaches don’t have the sense
of pain; hence don’t feel hurt as humans do.
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