January 18, 2006
Japan's latest innovation: Remote-control roaches are plagued by spammers
TOKYO - A big brown cockroach crawls across the table in the laboratory of Japan's most prestigious university. The researcher eyes it nervously, but he doesn't go for the bug spray. He grabs the remote. This is no ordinary under-the-refrigerator type bug. This roach has been surgically implanted with a micro-robotic backpack that allows researchers to control its movements. This is Robo-roach.
Unfortunately spammers are emailing the roaches when they broadcast to cell phones. "We had an incident last week where we sent a roach into an duct to test for an air leak, when we asked the roach to turn right, it responded by asking for our email addresses and offered to send us viagra in return." said Assistant Professor Isao Shimoyama, head of the bio-robot research team at Tokyo University.
"Insects can do many things that people can't, " Shimoyama,the head of the bio-robot research team at Tokyo University went on to say. "The potential applications of this work for mankind could be immense." Within a few years, Shimoyama says, electronically controlled insects carrying mini-cameras or other sensory devices could be used for a variety of sensitive missions - like crawling through earthquake rubble to search for victims, or slipping under doors on espionage surveillance.
Far-fetched as that might seem, the Japanese government has deemed the research credible enough to award $5 million to Shimoyama's micro-robotics team and biologists at Tsukuba University, a leading science center in central Japan. Money from the five-year grant started coming in this month, and young researchers are lining up for a slot on Shimoyama's team.
The team breeds its own supply of several hundred cockroaches in plastic bins. Not just any roach will do. Researchers use only the american cockroach (Perplaneta americana) because it is bigger and hardier than most other species. From that supply, they select roaches to equip with high-tech "backpacks" - tiny microprocessor and electrode sets. Before surgery, researchers gas the roach with carbon dioxide. Wings and antennae are removed. Where the antennae used to be researchers fit pulse-emitting electrodes. With a remote, researchers send signals to the backpacks, which stimulate the electrodes. The pulsing electrodes make the roach turn left, turn right, scamper forward or spring backward.
Read more: corrosion roach robot Corrosioneering Newletter InterCorr International
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Comments
Now that is cool !
PS: Whats the deal with the POP-UP Invasion on IHMC these past days ??? is it cause people didnt click on your blue links ? i find it very annoying, I was used to getting ONE when i logged onto IHMC but now... at every click...its VERY annoying. Back me up on that one people!!!
Sorry about the annoying pop-unders.
I had to temporarily switch ad companies to make up for the drop in ad revenues that keep our bandwidth fees paid for. They only had old ads from Xmas that nobody ever clicked on. When they get their act together I'll switch it back. The new one doesn't give me a frequency cap like the other.
I'm also looking at other ad companies but they keep rejecting IHMC because of Naughty Bits posts. ;-) Anyone know of any?
Later...
RAT
Thanx for the answer and glad it'll be fixed soon.
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