When building a robot that emulates an existing animal or other life form, engineers must accept the humble truth: nature always does it better. You just can’t compete with billions of years of evolution. Consider the agility of a simple house fly, or the fact that certain moths can identify pheromones when there are only a few molecules present. Some researchers have therefore concluded that it is far more effective to try and interface with some of nature’s technology instead of building it from scratch.
Jose Delgado pioneered the research into electrical brain stimulation at Yale in the 1940s by inserting electrodes into cats and monkeys to evoke responses in the brain. In a famous media stunt in 1963, he fitted a bull with a remote control device which stimulated a specific part of its brain. He stepped into the ring with the bull and let it charge him. At the last second, he activated the stimulator, stopping the bull in its tracks.
Since then, the military has gained interest in this technology as it could be used on insects for surveillance purposes. Various DARPA funded projects have succeeded in controlling insects and beetles, getting their wings to flap at different speeds based on a computer controlled electrodes inserted into specific parts of their brains. The big problem is trying to design components small enough that can be inserted into an insect’s body without disrupting its flight.
Chuck Higgins from the University of Arizona thinks a better approach is to turn the problem inside out by embedding insects into the robot. If a robot could leverage the chemical sniffing ability of a moth, for example, then it could be used by the military for detecting explosives. Higgins and his team have been able to build a robot that can read visual information directly from its passenger Hawk Moth’s brain using electrodes and amplifiers and send this information back into the robot’s control system. In the future, he’d like to integrate with other parts of the moth brain, including the olfactory system which would give his robots one of the most sophisticated sensory systems available.
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