“BioBot” Roaches Could Save Lives With Tiny Backpacks | National Geographic

when we stimulate your right antenna
they think that there is an obstacle to
their ride and it makes them turn left
when we stimulate both their antenna
they think there is an obstacle just up
ahead
and they stop and we call them biopods
we try to promote the understanding that
actually when you see and cockroach
around before you try to kill it you can
remember that it may save your life we’d
use the technologies used for neural
engineering basically the stuff that is
used for building cardiac pacemakers we
implant these to insects and we try to
control their locomotion they are moving
about on their free will and we are just
nudging them in appropriate locations of
our interest the ultimate goal that we
have is to collaborate with them to
search for victims after natural
disasters so the eventual idea would be
to send in a storm of working insect
Barbot inside the search-and-rescue area
we create with electronic backpacks and
unidirectional microphone array we can
pinpoint location of a sound source for
example a victim crying out for help you
can direct biobots to area where a
victim is crying out for help and the
location information can be sent to
first responders who can then go and
rescue the victim cockroaches in general
navigate with their antenna it senses
obstacles predators and so on and so
forth that information is transferred to
electrical signals which is passed on to
their brain we are hacking into that
medium in addition to controlling
cockroaches we also try to control of
aerial insects mods in this particular
case as engineers we are actually amazed
by how wonderful the insects are so when
we are working with them we make sure
that all ethical standards are
maintained most of the time we look at
in success tests these are some
beautiful creations hopefully the insect
barber platform will one day be used in
a search-and-rescue scenario if it does
it will greatly help first responders
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