Cockroach Becomes Robot and Saves Cost

The researchers from the University of North Carolina State University have figured a way to control the eerie looking cockroaches. The team from the IBionicS laboratory installed a control unit on the insect in order to take control of its body.

"Our aim was to determine whether we could create a wireless biological interface with cockroaches, which are robust and able to infiltrate small spaces," Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work was quoted in Phys.Org. "Ultimately, we think this will allow us to create a mobile web of smart sensors that uses cockroaches to collect and transmit information, such as finding survivors in a building that's been destroyed by an earthquake.

"Building small-scale robots that can perform in such uncertain, dynamic conditions is enormously difficult," Bozkurt says. "We decided to use biobotic cockroaches in place of robots, as designing robots at that scale is very challenging and cockroaches are experts at performing in such a hostile environment."

In order to steer the cockroaches in defined parameters and areas of interest the researchers looked for a cost effective and electrically safe way to control the cockroaches. They considered creating a biobotic cockroach more cost effective alternate to small scale robots.

The team plugged a low-cost, light-weight, commercially-available chip with a wireless receiver and transmitter weighing 0.7 grams onto each Madagascar hissing cockroach. Along with this it was also embedded with a microcontroller attached to the antennae and cerci (one of a pair of sensory appendages at the tip of the abdomen of some insects) that will avoid neural damage by monitoring the interface between the implanted electrodes and the tissue. The wires that are attached to the cerci will stimulate the cockroach into motion.

The sensors that are attached to antennae perform a similar function, acting as the reins and pointing the roach in the direction the researchers want.

"Spurring the cockroaches to scurry forward comes via a sensor on their rear end called cerci which senses if there is a predator trying to reach from behind. When they feel something, they just go in the forward direction to run away from the predator," Bozkurt was quoted in NBC News Digital. "So, we use that to make the insect go forward and antenna electrodes to make it go left and right."

"Ultimately, we think this will allow us to create a mobile web of smart sensors that uses cockroaches to collect and transmit information, such as finding survivors in a building that's been destroyed by an earthquake," Bozkurt was quoted in LiveScinece.com

This paper was presented at annual International Conference of the IEEE engineering in Medicine & Biology Society in San Diego, Calif.