'Cyber Moths' Created To Spy on Enemies

The Pentagon is creating an army of cyber-moths and beetles to spy on their enemies.

They aim to insert micro-systems as the live insects undergo metamorphosis and their organs grow around the chips and wires that make up the remote-control devices. US military science bureau DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) believes they can take advantage of the evolution of insects such as moths in the pupa stage during which the insect is re-built.

The programme is called HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) and it sounds like something out of a sci-fi book - because it is.

Project director Dr Amit Lal got the idea after reading Thomas Easton's 1990 novel Sparrowhawk in which animals enlarged by genetic engineering were fitted with implanted control systems.

DARPA's goal is to create cyborg insects that can fly at least 100 metres from their controller and land within 5 metres of a target, then stay put until commanded to buzz off again.

If the groups keep making strides, the proverbial fly on the wall may literally become a spy..

It may be time to arm yourselves with a can of bug spray and a good old-fashioned swatter – just to be on the safe side.

In a series of video clips shown at a science conference in Tucson, Arizona, and posted online a tobacco hawkmoth with wires connected to its back lifts and lowers one wing, then the other, then both, in response to signals delivered to its flight muscles.

As the DARPA researchers ramp up the frequency of the muscle stimulation the moth's wings beat faster approaching take-off speed.

In another clip, the moth is flying, tethered from above, when electrical impulses applied to muscles on one side or the other cause the moth to yaw left or right.

The clips were filmed at the Boyce Thompson Institute in Ithaca, New York, where a team led by Dr David Stern implanted the flexible plastic probes into tobacco hawkmoth pupae seven days before the moths emerged.

They found inserting them any earlier meant the tissue was too fluid to seal around the probe, but any later and development was too advanced and the probes damaged the moths' muscles.

A probe is embedded in each set of flight muscles on either side of the moth and a connection protrudes from the moth's back. This can be hooked up to the tether wires which also deliver control signals and power.

The team has also designed and built a battery-powered onboard control system although it is not known if they had made moths fly using this untethered arrangement, reports New Scientist.

Meanwhile another DARPA-funded group led by Dr Michel Maharbiz at California University implanted electrodes into the brains of adult green June beetles, near brain cells that control flight.

When the team delivered pulses of negative voltage to the brain, the beetles' wing muscles began beating and the bugs took off.

A pulse of positive voltage shut the wings down, stopping flight short, and by rapidly switching between these signals, they controlled the insects' thrust and lift.

Dr Maharbiz's team found two ways to make tethered beetles turn. In one, they mounted an LED display in front of a beetle's eyes. Lighting up the left or right portion turned the beetle in the opposite direction.

In a second, more successful, approach they directly stimulated the flight muscles on one side, causing the insect to turn to the other.

Dr Maharbiz's system uses a battery glued to the outside of the beetle for power, while Dr Stern's moth-control system relies on power provided through wires plugged into the implant.

But both would stick out like sore thumbs, and that's before adding the microphones, environmental sensors and transmitters that they would need to be of any use as spies.

The challenge now is to shrink the components to hide as many of them as possible inside the insect. They are also looking to harness power from the insects themselves. How the insects will be guided to a target is yet another unresolved problem.

"There were a bunch of ideas," said Dr Charles Higgins at the University of Arizona, who was involved in DARPA's original brainstorming session for the HI-MEMS project.

One was to use radio control to guide the moth although that would mean emitting radio signals, which could be detected by the enemy.

A second was to use GPS signals to guide the insect to its goal, and a third was to point the moth in the right direction and send it off with a pre-programmed series of instructions – for example, fly straight for 50 metres, then circle.

"What you want to avoid is some way of detecting that it's not a plain old insect, or some situation where its signals could be jammed," said Dr Higgins.

Researchers have already developed remote control systems for rats, pigeons and even sharks but these latest projects are the most audacious yet.

The motivation is simple - why labour for years to build robots that imitate the ways animals move when you can just plug into living creatures and hijack systems already optimised by millions of years of evolution?

"There's a long history of trying to develop micro-robots that could be sent out as autonomous devices, but I think many engineers have realised that they can't improve on Mother Nature," said insect neurobiologist Dr John Hildebrand at the University of Arizona.

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