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Comment by tijuco2 | Hacker News Reader

I've seen another study, which in my opinion is way more useful, where they are able to control a cockroaches using electrical pulses on their antennas. With a camera attached to its back, these cockroachs will be able to find people underneath rubbles.

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You can actually buy a hobbyist DIY kit to put this 'backpack' on a roach. Apparently they get desensitized pretty quickly though. https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/roboRoachSurgery

In Fifth Element, pretty much exactly this was used to spy on the President. (it was squished)

That's the only image stuck in my head since reading the headline. Glad to see they are in fact reality. Such a great movie, except the ten minutes of ruby rod screaming.

The whole movie is great, especially IMO the Ruby Rhod scenes!

Or from a different vantage point, Franz Kafka writes a techno-thriller.

I've heard that such roaches have a short working life, though, because at some point they'll begin ignoring antenna input.

Could a cockroach carry both the cockroach control device and the camera? Does the micro camera have enough low light capabilities to be useful in the dark? Are there any animal ethics to be taken into consideration for attempting this route?

I can’t tell if that idea is 2 years or 20 years in the future, but it sounds neat.

You'd probably be better off using a microphone if we are taking about search in low light conditions. Or maybe a CO2 sensor, if you can miniaturize it enough.

But I'm not so sure it's that much better than dogs for search and rescue. Much more promising for surveillance.

Animal ethics? Lol. It's an insect! What's next? You need permission to bleach your kitchen floor because you killing bacteria?

Surely ethics is considered in any good study even if it is just insects.

Source: https://news.ncsu.edu/2012/09/wms-cockroach-steering/

It might not be the only research lab doing this, but its the one I'm most aware of.

Yeah and we know they'll be misused for morally questionable jobs too.

It's a tool, and like every single other tool in history of mankind, it can be used for both good and bad

Just ignore it whenever researchers say their thing could be used for search and resuce. Nearly every fun robot invention is promoted as having that purpose, probably because the inventors can't really think of an actual use but they still realize it's cool.

How deep into rubble could it get before losing signal?

They could do p2p.

They could call it a swarm.

Sounds like it'd be pretty buggy, though.

Thought this was reddit for a second

synergies with insects could be amazing.. a mesh network of vigilantes cockroaches helping find missing people in nature ..

R2R, or Roach 2 Roach would be more apt. Jokes aside, this tech later applied to other animals, say that pesky 2 legged kind could make for a rather interesting future.

Aha, now I know what the Neuralink will be used for.

The Internet of Things!

...and those Things are bugs.

Please send a link

Kickstarter, 2013: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/backyardbrains/the-robo...

https://youtu.be/icQv33kWKm8

Interesting please share link

Pickle Riiiiiick!

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