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发帖数: 14557 | 2 http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/remote-control-t
Remote-control tech turns cockroaches into beasts of burden
Scientists have outfitted a cockroach with a high-tech backpack that allows
them to remotely control where it scurries.
While the concept may sound terrifying, anyone buried alive under rubble in
an earthquake will shout for joy at the sight of one of these bugs. The
shout will be relayed to rescue teams.
Search and rescue robots are already in use. Many were showcased during the
2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
But building practical, insect-sized robots able to squeeze through tightly
packed rubble has proven difficult because of the large batteries needed to
power them.
“Insects have a power process on them, a natural one,” Alper Bozkurt, an
electrical engineer at North Carolina State University, explained to me
Friday. “We just needed to supply power for communication, which is not
much.”
The research builds on studies that have attached radio tags and sensors to
insects to learn how their muscles work. Bozkurt and colleagues took this a
step further and stimulated their muscles.
Their remote control system consists of two parts: antennae stimulators and
another on their rear end.
Cockroaches use their antennae to feel their way around the environment. “
What we do is we insert tiny electrodes to the antennae and we send low-
power pulses [to them],” Bozkurt said.
The pulse simulates the antenna feeling an obstacle, such as a wall, causing
the cockroach to turn the other direction. Buzz the left antenna, the
cockroach turns right; buzz the right one, the bug turns left.
Spurring the cockroaches to scurry forward comes via a sensor on their rear
end called cerci “which senses if there is a predator trying to reach from
behind. When they feel something, they just go in the forward direction to
run away from the predator,” Bozkurt explained.
“So, we use that to make the insect go forward and antenna electrodes to
make it go left and right.”
In case all this shocking of cockroaches makes you feel sorry for the
insects, Bozkurt said not to worry.
“Insects do not have the concept of pain … they have sensors that direct
their reflexes, but they don’t have pain sensors,” he said.
So far, the team has successfully demonstrated the technology works. The
video below shows a cockroach being steered along a curvy line in a hallway.
Going forward, the team aims to create more real-life scenarios and work on
communicating with the cockroaches under, for example, piles of rubble.
“Right now we have direct line-of-sight communication,” Bozkurt said. “
But when you are trying to save people, there will be a lot of material
between our transmitter and the antenna on the insect.”
The electrical engineer likened his research to the domestication of horses,
oxen and other so-called beasts of burden that were a boon to the
development of ancient civilizations.
Until now “we never thought of using insects for their muscle power,” he
said.
What’s different today is we have the tools and biological know-how to
control the cockroaches as well as a use for a beast of burden that can only
carry a payload of a couple of grams.
“We are now living in the information era,” Bozkurt said. “So the most
important payload is the information itself and we can … gather megabits of
information on the insect’s backpack.”
Bozkurt and graduate Tahmid Latif presented a paper on the technology in
August at the annual conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and
Biology Society. |
