Cyborg-insekter angriber!

Nå ja, ikke helt endnu. men amerikanerne arbejder på sagen:

The agency that the Pentagon set up to turn outlandish sci-fi concepts into reality has come closer to creating an army – or air force – of cybugs: cyber-moths and beetles that can spy on the enemy.

Inspired by Thomas Easton’s 1990 novel Sparrowhawk in which animals enlarged by genetic engineering were fitted with implanted control systems, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) set out to insert micro-systems into living insects as they undergo metamorphosis.

The plan is that their organs will grow around the chips and wires that make up the remote-control devices.

Darpa’s goal is to create cyborg insects that can fly at least 100 metres from their controller and land within 5 metres of a target and stay there until commanded to buzz off again...

Meanwhile another Darpa-funded group led by Dr Michel Maharbiz at California University has implanted electrodes into the brains of adult green June beetles, near brain cells that control flight.

When the team delivered pulses of negative voltage to the brain, the beetles’ wing muscles began beating and the bugs took off. A pulse of positive voltage shut the wings down, stopping flight short, and by rapidly switching between these signals, they controlled the insects’ thrust and lift.

The challenge now is to shrink the components to hide as many of them as possible inside the insect. They are also looking to harness power from the insects themselves and resolve how the insects will be guided to a target.