DARPA plays with remote-controlled cyborg beetles
September 28th, 2009
Yeah, cyborg beetles. RC cyborg beetles. It’s the work of a team at UC Berkley, who have successfully wired beetles up with electrodes, allowing them to be enslaved remotely.
“We demonstrated the remote control of insects in free flight via an implantable radioequipped miniature neural stimulating system,” the team reported in a paper titled Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. “The pronotum mounted system consisted of neural stimulators, muscular stimulators, a radio transceiver-equipped microcontroller and a microbattery.”
Guess who is sponsoring their work. DARPA of course. Soon wars may be fought with wave upon wave of cyborg beetles, with the enemy crying, “Get it off me! Dear god, get it off me!”
