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(Image source: Backyard Brains)
BY JASMINE BAILEY
It's always such a pleasant surprise to walk into a room and see a roach or two scurry
away under the couch or the refrigerator. But what if you could control their little
buggy minds to scurry right out the door? Well, now you can — sort of.
This is RoboRoach, and yes, it is a real roach, and yes, it is wearing a backpack. The cyborg
roach project will be presented at the TEDGlobal conference in Scotland this week. (Via Backyard
Brains)
So how does this contraption work? Or more importantly, how does one get a backpack on
a roach?
Step one: making the roach unconscious for the "surgery." That's done easily by placing
it in ice water. (Via YouTube / Ilse Knatz Ortabasi)
Then the backpack is attached, and according to one of the study's researchers, neuroscientist
Greg Gage, the backpack "communicates directly with the neurons in the cockroach's antennae." (Via TED)
And then those neurons communicate information to the bug's brain, which allows Gage to control
the movements of the cyborg roach with a smartphone. (Via Boing Boing)
"They use their antennas to navigate the world. They're passing information about if it touches
a wall, and if it does touch a wall, the cockroach wants to turn in the opposite direction. By
lightly stimulating these nerves, we can actually trick the cockroach into thinking it has touched
a wall." (Via Kickstarter)
Oh, but the fun doesn't stop there. Check out this other project created by Gage and
his partner called the Spiker Box. The first step in using this device is also to knock
the roach out with a little ice water, then "Carefully cut off one of its legs. Don't worry, they
can grow back. ... A particularly fun one students enjoy is stimulating neurons and
muscles to music." (Via Backyard Brains)
OK, then. But hey, as Digital Trends puts it, "before you begin to wonder if Gage is
one whisker short of a full beard, best to hear him out."
He told the BBC: "This is not just a gimmick, the technique is the same as that used to
treat Parkinson's disease and in cochlear implants. ... The point of the project is
to create a tool to learn about how our brain works."
And as for the ethics of poking, prodding and cutting legs off living beings, Gage addressed
that, too, saying, "We are pretty certain that this doesn't impose pain on the insect
and they still have free will because they adapt very quickly and ignore the stimulation."
Well, there you have it — a smartphone-controlled roach. Gage and his partner are on Kickstarter,
but they've still got a little ways to go. With a goal of $10,000, they've raised just more
than $3,000 with 27 days left.
And if you want to try out your own cockroach cyborg at home, you can visit the project's
website on Backyard Brains and pre-order your very own kit for just $100.
Buying the roach is optional. We'll leave this one up to the bug enthusiast — it's
never been a priority of mine to get that close to the critters.