DARPA seeks help designing combat robot insect hordes
Xeni Jardin:
Snip from proposal request on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency website:
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. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power.
Link. (Thanks, mantid)
Image: sheesh, I guess for some global superpowers, Insectobots toys just aren’t good enough.
(Via Boing Boing.)
[tags]military,robot,insect,animal[/tags]
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