Berkeley & DARPA's cyborg beetle. Piloted by remote control.

We demonstrated the remote control of insects in free flight via an implantable radio-equipped miniature neural stimulating system. The pronotum mounted system consisted of neural stimulators, muscular stimulators, a radio transceiver-equipped microcontroller and a microbattery. Flight initiation, cessation and elevation control were accomplished through neural stimulus of the brain which elicited, suppressed or modulated wing oscillation. Turns were triggered through the direct muscular stimulus of either of the basalar muscles. We characterized the response times, success rates, and free-flight trajectories elicited by our neural control systems in remotely-controlled beetles. We believe this type of technology will open the door to in-flight perturbation and recording of insect flight responses.

Article here

I think is really amazing and it's uses are endless for both, good & evil deeds for sure. Hopefully the use of this cyborg bug will be for good but one can never be sure nowadays. It makes me wonder where and how "they" developed (or reverse engineered?) these componets to control the muscles for flight turns and such. We will likely never learn that but hopefully many of you wil find this interesting as I have.

reply to post by mikelee


Morning mikelee!

I think the basic premise behind controlling this beetle is old science... Shock a muscle, or a nerve, and generate a specific or desired response. That seems to be, basically, what is at play here. This is a high tech reigns and bridle for a bug.

I'm sure a lot of people will watch this video and think about the implications for spying - IE getting audio or video monitoring equipment into a environment remotely and undetected. But what scares me more is the notion that this kind of science could easily be foisted upon us in the guise of something else.

I mean, can you imagine an implant that could make you get up and go to work whether you wanted to or not?

Interesting to say the least...

~Heff

reply to post by Hefficide


Morning to you too!!

I know, my mind goes to the spy section on this

But the DARPA involvement just makes me sit up and take notice. If it were only Berkeley then thats another thing. But add in DARPA and my flags go up.

I mean, can you imagine an implant that could make you get up and go to work whether you wanted to or not?

Even though I'm retired since '03 and a half, I have my wife to do that for me.

Have a good morning.

reply to post by mikelee


The best name for these is:

Biodrones

Name was coined by Shadowrun 4th edition's sourcebook, titled Running Wild.

Sample PDF : Running Wild

Applications for these are very scary. Imagine a swarm of bugs loaded with poison tips screaming towards you. Or a fly implanted with small amounts of c4 blows up in the back of your throat. Or a dog whose actions are too human to be real. (These can be applied on more than just bugs.)

Just scary.

reply to post by guppy


Nice info!!! Star for that.

yes, the thought of a thousand or so of these buggys coming at ya with poison tips (stingers) or releasing some nasty gas within a confined area is just terrible.

RC Cockroaches Too - it would freak me out if I saw one of these

STELLAR BEING WERE YOU ALL

Originally posted by quantum_flux
RC Cockroaches Too - it would freak me out if I saw one of these

THat's not very nice to for us to see.

Originally posted by quantum_flux
RC Cockroaches Too - it would freak me out if I saw one of these

Good too see my Texas A&M is behind this

This evil must stop. I like help blind people.