Insect meets machine: “The HI-MEMS program is aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis. “

Hybrid Insect MEMS (HI-MEMS)

… The HI-MEMS program is aimed to develop technology that provides more control over insect locomotion, just as saddles and horseshoes are needed for horse locomotion control.

The goal of the MEMS, inside the insects, will be to control the locomotion by obtaining motion trajectories either from GPS coordinates, or using RF, optical, ultrasonic signals based remote control …. The intimate control of insects with embedded microsystems will enable insect cyborgs, which could carry one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination.

[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]

Fox News reports on military moth cyborgs:

… This will be no ordinary moth.

Inside it will be a computer chip that was implanted when the creature was still a pupa, in the cocoon, meaning that the moth’s entire nervous system can be controlled remotely.

… The moth will be capable of landing … without arousing suspicion, all the while beaming video and other information back to its masters via what its developers refer to as a “reliable tissue-machine interface.”

The creation of insects whose flesh grows around computer parts — known from science fiction as cyborgs — has been described as one of the most ambitious robotics projects ever conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Rod Brooks, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is involved with the research, said in a speech last week at the University of Southampton in England that robotics was increasingly at the forefront of U.S. military research.

… “This is going to happen,” said Brooks. “It’s not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply.”

“Moths are creatures that need little food and can fly all kinds of places,” he continued. “A bunch of experiments have been done over the past couple of years where simple animals, such as rats and cockroaches, have been operated on and driven by joysticks, but this is the first time where the chip has been injected in the pupa stage and ‘grown’ inside it.”

“Once the moth hatches,” Brooks said, “machine learning is used to control it.”

[Fox News]

More details:

The latest research aims to integrate micro-systems within insects during their early stages of metamorphoses. Thus the insect would grow around its machine implant with the aim of delivering more reliable results than through the adhesive bonding of electromechanical systems to adult insects (ie. using a kind of “back-pack” that can be connected to the adult insect as the control interface).

Chemical “training” of insects and attempts to use neural interfaces to control insects has also been investigated but these approaches have faced difficulty in overcoming behavioral traits such as mating and feeding.

The perceived benefit of integrating the MEMS during the early stages of tissue growth is that the insect will heal wounds and re-align internal organs around these tiny foreign objects to form a reliable tissue-machine interface. The locomotion of the insect could then be controlled using one of several approaches including direct electrical muscle stimulation, electrical stimulation of neurons, projection of pheromones, stimulation of insect sensory cells and optical cues.

The specific goals of the DARPA proposal include the delivery of an insect to within five meters of a specific target located a hundred meters away using electronic remote control or GPS navigation, the ability to control the insect so that it remains stationary until otherwise instructed and the successful transmission of data pertaining to the local environment through video, microphones or other sensors. The project also aims to develop ways of “scavenging” the biological properties of the insect to power these capabilities. And its not just flying insects like moths that are being targeted in the new research. DARPA envisions that insects that hop and swim could also prove valuable in attaining these objectives.

[Gizmag]

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