Weapons of mass detection
Julian Borger | Washington
22 March 2006 10:40
The Pentagon is trying to develop "insect cyborgs" able to sniff
out explosives, or "bug" conversations, by lurking unseen in enemy
hideouts with micro-transmitters strapped to their bodies.
The cyborgs -- half insect, half robot -- would be created by inserting
tiny devices into the bodies of flying, hopping or crawling insects
while in their larva or pupa stage,
so that the mechanisms become part of their bodies and ultimately allow
them to
be moved by remote control.
Their most immediate task could be spotting and identifying the
location of roadside bombs in Iraq. President George W Bush announced
on Monday that the administration was spending more than $3billion this
year to combat the threat of "improvised explosive devices". Some
of that money, said the president, would be used to bring together the
country's best minds to think up new ideas.
The "insect cyborg" is clearly one of those ideas. Recently, the
Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) called
for bids on the project. "Darpa seeks innovative proposals to develop
technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately
integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of
metamorphoses," its advertisement says.
"Through each metamorphic stage, the insect body goes through a
renewal process that can heal wounds and reposition internal organs
around foreign objects,"
a Darpa information sheet for inventors points out.
Such techniques will provide a much better link between the microsystem
and the insect than simply sticking a microchip to the abdomen of a
bee, wasp or cockroach, Darpa believes.
In earlier experiments, bees and wasps were trained to identify the
smell of explosives by having the smell associated with sugar water.
But these insects had other agendas or, as Darpa put it: "The
instinctive behaviours for feeding and mating (and also for responding
to temperature changes) prevented them from performing reliably."
Implanting microsystems within the insect would, theoretically, allow
it to be controlled remotely. A successful bidder would have to deliver
"an insect within five metres of a specific target located 100m
away" and then "the insect must remain stationary either
indefinitely or until otherwise instructed".
Pic:
http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/267341/cyborg.jpg
Source:
http://www.mg.co.za
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:22 CST
