Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has just taken one of our planet’s most abhorred insects — the Madagascar hissing cockroach — and turned it into a cyborg savior.
The breakthrough led by Professor Hirotaka Sato features the world’s first automated robotic system for assembling cyborg insects, where miniature electronic backpacks are attached to the cockroaches, turning them into biohybrid robots.
NTU’s Cyborg Insect Factory Line
Outfitting cockroaches with electronics for remote control isn’t new; it has been done before, but the process is excruciatingly slow; it takes an hour to assemble the electronics on an insect manually.
NTU’s automated system, on the other hand, uses AI and computer vision to identify the best spot for placing the lightweight backpack composed of sensors, a battery, and control circuitry. In tests, the automated system completed such assemblies on four insects in under 8 minutes — 30 times faster than manual assembly!
Aiding Time-Sensitive Operations
More impressive was the mass-produced backpacks’ ability to stimulate the insects’ movement using 25% less voltage, thereby decreasing overstimulation and increasing energy efficiency. These factors are critical for meeting the crucial 72-hour, life-and-death window after a disaster.
In recent tests, ten such cyborg cockroaches were sent to Myanmar as part of a humanitarian mission following a 7.7-magnitude earthquake. They proved adept at navigating rubble and tight crevices, as well as detecting human presence, something conventional robots would have failed at due to size or battery limitations.
Reliable Cyborg Applications
NTU has also created a swarm navigation algorithm allowing cockroaches to work in groups. These groups are led by a leader insect whose movements coordinate with the others, reminding one of robot swarms sans energy-intensive motors or high computational power.
In real-life scenarios, this could make NTU’s cyborgs an optimal choice for inspecting critical infrastructure, military reconnaissance, and swarm-based object transport.
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