The robot in WALL-E may have befriended a cockroach, but humans are more likely to react with revulsion than joy at the sight of one. Would you feel differently, however, if you were trapped in a collapsed building or mine, and rescuers had sent a cockroach in to find you? A team of researchers says it can harness the cockroach's uncanny survivability in ways that might someday benefit humanity.

The trick is to fire wireless signals at a roach's antennae and other sensory organs to guide it to a desired destination, says Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor in North Carolina State University's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Bozkurt, working with doctoral candidate Tahmid Latif, communicated with Madagascar hissing cockroaches by saddling them with electrical devices that look like backpacks. Each insect backpack included a thin, rigid, printed circuit board with a microcontroller, a wireless signal receiver, miniature plugs for connecting stimulation electrodes and a lithium-ion polymer battery.

"What we do is similar to riding a horse," Bozkurt says. "[The] cockroach walks naturally, and we simulate barriers by sending pulses to its antenna. They use their antenna as touch sensors, so stimulation on one side directs these insects towards the opposite direction." Bozkurt and Latif presented their research last month at the 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society in San Diego, Calif.

Bozkurt and Latif attached the backpacks to the roaches using magnets that they glued to the insects' backs. They used tiny stainless steel electrodes to connect the backpack's circuit board to the roach's antennae and fixed them in place with medical-grade epoxy, according to Bozkurt. The researchers then wirelessly sent electrical impulses to the backpack's receiver, which stimulated either the left or right antenna.

The greater the electrical charge, the more sharply the roaches changed direction. The researchers say they programmed the microcontroller with an algorithm to monitor the amount of voltage induced into the roach's neural tissue in order to keep from damaging that tissue and making it unresponsive to stimulation pulses.

The researchers see remote-control cockroaches as an alternative to small-scale robots. Designing robots at that scale is very challenging and cockroaches are experts at navigating hostile environments, according to Bozkurt. "They come with biological autonomy to help them survive and this, if carefully controlled, helps them to respond to uncertain and dynamic conditions of certain scenarios such as searching for survivors after an earthquake," he says. Bozkurt and Latif's next step is to miniaturize the backpack even further and gain more precise control of movement.

6 Comments

1. 1. Pius 12:48 PM 9/10/12

   I build robots and find the use of living creatures wrong. What is being done is to electronically simulate areas in their brain to follow a line or walk a certain way. I mean we as a species can be so cruel when it comes to respecting other living creatures , yes even those as simple as a cockroach. Have any of these researchers ever observed an ant? Watch at the subtle and brilliant movements and reactions of these noble insects. Watch and wonder how a spider spins her web. If only we could build at that level of complexity and master the smallness they exhibit.
   
   We use robots in areas of conflict and this too is wrong.Robots I believe should show our good side. They are creations of our collective genius. True robots will I believe help us survive and thrive.
   
   Let those of us who research the building robots continue in our effort to master this complex study. Robotics should involve fundamental research and answer those ever so difficult of robot consciousness and intelligence. As such the use or in this case the misuse of existing organic creatures is an insult to those who struggle with this field.
   
   We can make up reasons why it might be worthwhile but let us be honest about the answers. They will never be an alternate to small scale robots. I feel that as we sow so shall we reap and this applies to robots as well. Let us build them well so they are superb. We should look to the stars, look up, not down.
   
   Pius(toborlives@sympatico.ca)

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2. 2. jgrosay 05:31 PM 9/11/12

   Some think the concept of remote control will be applicable also to vertebrates and even to mankind, just see the good Argentinian Science-Fiction tale "El eternauta" (The traveler of eternity)

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3. 3. edprochak in reply to Pius 10:15 AM 9/19/12

   Do you find the robotics applied to humans with nerve damage wrong? The research has to start somewhere.
   
   I agree that we can be very cruel, even to our own species. This particular research seems much less cruel than others I've heard and read about.
   
   Actually this research is less robotics and more neurology.
   
   ed

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4. 4. allaphor 07:10 AM 1/2/13

   In the long run I thing we would be better off developing pure machine technology, since there are limits to the kinds of environments where water based chemistry will work. On the other end, this is the pragmatic, right move to make. Like edprochak said, this could be the basis for interesting developments in prosthetics and, on a shorter term this could have huge disaster response and military applications. Designing and microfabricating insect-like robots, which can 'live of the land' and self repair is still a very,very long way ahead, we can co-opt nature's achievements today.

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5. 5. 78RPM in reply to Pius 01:02 PM 2/13/13

   Pius, I agree. This is not science; it's slavery. Inventing our own robot advances technology more than burdening a living creature. We might have very different motivations from roaches but they still have rights. In a Star Trek future, we will realize this.

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6. 6. chrispine0764 07:16 AM 3/5/13

   I feel little weird and gross at the thought of cockroaches, or bugs crawling on human body, despite they are doing salvation..
   in this passage, scientists really experimented on the live bug, maybe think over turning it into a mini-robot?

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