Zombie Moth Head Controls Robot
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 20 of July , 2009 at 5:19 am
As we’ve seen, insect brains are way more complicated and capable than even the most complex artificial robot. With this in mind (so to speak) researchers in Japan are attempting to experimentally determine how insect brains are wired, in the hope of (soon) altering insect brains to do other things and (eventually) creating electronic brains that mimic the functionality of insect brains. Already, they’ve been able to genetically modify a male silkmoth so that it reacts to changing lights instead of changing scents, in effect remapping one stimulus-response to an entirely different type of sensory input.
The robot in the picture above is controlled by a severed moth head. The still functional antennae receive scent information and relay it to the moth’s brain, which does the data processing and sends signals to muscles, which are picked up by sensors and used to steer the robot. In this particular case, the robot can’t do much more than chase down sexy girl moths, but with the remapping technique, all kinds of customized moth brain sensor robots are possible. And more.
Experiments have shown that moth brains, like human brains, have the ability to adapt to situations which might seem impossibly complex, from an evolutionary standpoint:
“Humans walk only at some five kilometres per hour but can drive a car that travels at 100 kilometres per hour. It’s amazing that we can accelerate, brake and avoid obstacles in what originally seem like impossible conditions,” [researcher Ryohei Kanzaki] said.
“Our brain turns the car into an extension of our body,” he said, adding that “an insect brain may be able to drive a car like we can. I think they have the potential.
“It isn’t interesting to make a robo-worm that crawls as slowly as the real one. We want to design a machine which is far more powerful than the living body.”
I agree with the sentiment, but it is interesting to make biorobots that exhibit the same abilities as the animals they emulate… Or try to, rather. We’re nowhere close yet. A robo-worm that crawls as slowly as the real one through soil would absolutely knock my socks off. This may be a different philsophy, however: these researchers are focused more on harnessing the natural abilities of insects to enhance robots designed for other tasks, as opposed to creating robots that emulate the abilities of insects. Other people are working on that one.
Comments (1)
Category: Artificial Intelligence, Biorobotics, Research
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Comment by Mario59
Made Tuesday, 28 of July , 2009 at 5:24 pm
mmmh!
Moth zombies? Insect brain in robots? Are we all sure that this would led to progress? Or to drive a new way to make WARS?
I’m against vivisection, I think that eve a moth could suffer terribly in such situation just as any other living being.
The fact that the moth is a parasite and cannot “protest”, won’t mean that he (it) agrees.
This kind of Frankestein idea are *really dangerous* within wrong hands.
All I can say: STOP EXPERIMENTS on living beings!
Respect life!
Ethic behaviour would save planet Earth from self destruction!
STOP EXPERIMENTS NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!