Radio-Controlled Cyborg Beetles Become Reality 150
holy_calamity writes "DARPA's plans to create brain chips for insects so they can be steered like an RC plane are bearing fruit. Videos show that a team at Berkeley can use radio signals to tell palm-sized African beetles to take off and land, and to lose altitude and steer left or right when in flight. They had to use the less-than-inconspicuous giant beetles because other species are too weak to take off with the weight of the necessary antenna and brain and muscle electrodes."
I for one (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
I am swarmed with the feeling that this will bug a lot of people.
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Of course it stings people; this is a war technology and it flies in the face of diplomacy and peace. We should be able to listen to our Beatles records in our VW bugs rather than collecting new weapons like a scarab collects shit. This ticks me off!
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Me too. Any country that spends more on weapons than on education should be called a developing nation.
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Me too. Any country that spends more on weapons than on education should be called a developing nation.
That sound you hear is the buzzing of a hive of puns flitting over your head.
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Car anology (Score:1)
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Beetles? What I want to know is, where are the Lesbian Rapist Robots, as promised?
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Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
What, no lasers?
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All this talk of lasers and radios and whatnot, and no one else is freaked out by the fact that there's beatles the size of your goddamned hand? o_o
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
Oh...I've said too much...
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Soon other people will be doing the same thing, using DARPA's leadership, and terrorism using that method will be common. In the entire history of the world, the U.S. government is the biggest originator of violence. The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the end of the 2nd world war. The U.S. has more citizens in prison than farmers. Weapons investors like Cheney and his friends and the Bush family want continuous war.
*slap* Shut up and make a bug joke.
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And that is ONLY (Score:2)
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... look forward to attending the Reunion Concert that we never had.
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As a cyborg myself (I have a device implanted in one of my eyes), [slashdot.org] I do NOT welcome my insect cyborg "bretheren". Yes, I'm a specist and proud of it. Human cyborgs RULE (or we did when cyborg Dick Cheney was VP).
Down with the buggy cyborgs!
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Why cant we do this to politicos and lawyers then?
For politicos, it's because they would need a brain to attach the electrodes to.
No problem (Score:2)
Smaller, smaller, smaller... (Score:2, Interesting)
"They had to use the less-than-inconspicuous giant beetles because other species are too weak to take off with the weight of the necessary antenna and brain and muscle electrodes."
So, as technology advances: smaller electronics, radio parts, electromechanical components, power source -> smaller state-of-the-art RC toy. How long until you can have your own, remote-controlled army of fruit flies? 5 years? 10? 20?
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How long until you can have your own, remote-controlled army of fruit flies?
Do they let gay flies into the army these days ?
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Don't ask, don't tell!
Name (Score:2, Funny)
Large? For Beetles.
Benevolent? Probably not.
Cyborg? Check.
I suggest we call these the Big Bad Beetleborgs.
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and then we coat them in various molten metals to get even stronger beetle..borgs!
Yo dawg, I heard you like flying beetles... (Score:3, Funny)
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FINALLY. (Score:4, Funny)
Sweet, but needs a lot of work still (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't monitor what they're doing without being in the same room, then the range is very small. On the other hand, if this could be scaled up to larger animals, perhaps the power would cease to be an issue. However, it does seem like the relative lack of sophistication present in these insects is what allows this control, in part.
Still, if they can get the surveillance issue figured out, this could represent a significant advance is Search and Rescue -- use insects or small animals to access places that humans can't (collapsed buildings, landslides, etc.)
Re:Sweet, but needs a lot of work still (Score:5, Interesting)
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How far and how fast can your radio go?
Depends on how hard you throw it.
/rimshot
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How far and how fast can your radio go?
That obviously depends on the beetle.
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Oh. My. God.
I see why people are spying on Iran, the picture at the bottom of the article.. It's the Emperor! *gasp*
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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If you can't monitor what they're doing without being in the same room, then the range is very small. On the other hand, if this could be scaled up to larger animals, perhaps the power would cease to be an issue.
Personally, something about surveillance tigers doesn't sit too well with me.
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You're just an anti-Mac bigot.
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Sharks. Although then you've got to find power for the laser beam.
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If you can't monitor what they're doing without being in the same room, then the range is very small.
I can't find a cite right now (too much bogus news clogging google) but I believe the American embassy in Russia was spied upon (audio) by bouncing a directed radio wave off of a strip of metal embedded in a piece of artwork hung in one of the offices.
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Okay, here is a citation [spybusters.com]. There was a microphone and an antenna in there. With a little MEMS work, though, you could put the microphone on a minuscule chip and bond it into a PCB to which wires were attached, and probably get the whole thing down to the size of a SMT LED. How did I get marked troll anyway?
I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
We've always wanted to be a fly on the wall; but having your secret spy weapon get eaten by an insectivorous plant would be pretty embarrassing.
PETA (Score:2)
5th Element anyone? (Score:1)
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More like something out of We3 [wikipedia.org].
Who knows? (Score:4, Funny)
Old news (Score:3, Informative)
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Well, yeah, the beetles still move pretty damn slow.
Ahh... (Score:1)
beetles... (Score:2, Funny)
Sharper Image (Score:1)
I wonder when I can buy myself one of these. It's only a matter of time before you can buy it in the Sharper Image.
Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Radio-Controlled Cyborg Beetles Become Reality
Well, it's about damn time. You know how long I've been waiting for this day?
/wipes away a single tear
Shame this is not genetic engineering (Score:2)
We're still decades (centuries? maybe, if there's roadblocks) away from being able to create a sense organ for radio and training an animal to follow commands received via it. Of course, then someone will want the communication to two way so you can see through the bug's eyes, etc. Before you know it you've equipped a social insect with a massive evolutionary advantage which it uses to form the most fearsome hive mind, flies into space and takes over the galaxy. Gah, then we have to flight bugs in space
Re:Shame this is not genetic engineering (Score:5, Funny)
So, you don't want citizenship, do you?
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I don't mind alien bugs, but if they start sucking out brains I'm going to kill myself rather than see how bad the timeline is.
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Why fight them? We can upload our minds into the process distributed inside the bugs' network and finally leave this god-forsaken corner of Virgo, and move into Shapley [wikipedia.org], where all the action is.
Best. Band Name. Ever. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Yes, where can I buy their mad songs on iTunes.
Too bad this technology only works (Score:5, Funny)
News at 11... (Score:1)
The Berkeley team has apparently been taken over, conquered if you will, by a master race of giant radio-controlled cyborg beetles.
It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Berkeley men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them. The beetles will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new radio controlled cyborg beetles.
Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
This was first done in the 5th Element when Zorg's assistant spies on the president. Obviously, according to IP law, DARPA owes the creators of the 5th Element $500 Trillion (in standard RIAA dollars).
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It'll never work due to incompatable interfaces (Score:1)
Improvization and Military use (Score:3, Insightful)
I just had an interesting thought. If the same research happened in Iran or N. Korea, then the western media would have, by now, successfully crafted false stories like "Iran prepares robotic spies for spying on US". It is very sad that we are not seeing stories like "US preparing to dispatch robotic bees to all evil parts of the world."
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North Korea and Iran ARE EVIL (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, why do you have to live in a stupid bubble that says a total dictatorship backed up by concentration camps isn't evil? These countries aren't like, ho hum, the USA, where you call yourself oppressed because your daddy didn't give attention. These are countries where you call yourself oppressed because you said you were hungry and the 5 year plan said you had more food than ever, or you said that you were unhappy and Allah should provide.
I'm so sick of hearing people put the USA on the same mora
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In other words, "we're not as evil as them so we're not evil at all". Sorry, but any nation with secret police or laws requiring secret police, even if you call them "plainclothesmen" or "undercover agents", is a police state.
Torturing prisoners is evil. I'm glad the present leader stopped the practice.
A nation where a citizen can be arrested without charge on his own soil and detained indefinitely without trial (Jose Padilla) is NOT a free country.
A country with "free speech zones" is NOT a free country.
Ju
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Granted, liberals are tearing all that down and replacing it with the sort of self indulgent crap that invariably leads to a sense of entitlement about property and ultimately a dictatorship class, but, they haven't been successful yet.
Had me up until here, man... "liberals" have built this country as much as "conservatives" have...
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Granted, liberals are tearing all that down and replacing it with the sort of self indulgent crap that invariably leads to a sense of entitlement about property and ultimately a dictatorship class, but, they haven't been successful yet.
Right. North Korea and Iran got where they are because of EVUL LIBRULS. Name one single society in which property entitlement from a progressively wealthier population led to a totalitarian dictatorship.
Anyway, the GP was commenting about news media. Someone's come up with a creepy spying technology that involves 1) doing BIZARRE MIND CONTROL on living things (near as I can tell, site is /.'d) and 2) has significant anti-civil-libertarian implications. The GP pointed out, quite rightly, that the double-
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> It is very sad that we are not seeing stories like "US preparing to dispatch
> robotic bees to all evil parts of the world".
I'm sure they're out there. You just aren't reading the right blogs. Don't you know that night vision goggles allow you to see through clothing?
esse est percipi (Score:1)
Somehow I think George Berkeley would be somewhat disappointed to see his namesake directly manipulating living organisms for the purpose of spying on humans.
Not yet ready ... (Score:2)
From what I've read they're many years away from perfecting this, it's too full of bugs.
better application for this (Score:1)
Just think of the benefits, if anything bad happens the department can just push the big red button and every dangerous man in the country automatically stops whatever they are doing and walks to the detention camp/holding cell until the the dept. in charge have figured out who had done it.
Brilliant! I can't wait for this system to get applied in a wider area than
When one of those hits your windshield... (Score:1)
...look out! I lived in west Africa for many years and I'll never forget what it's like for one of those to hit the windshield while driving at night at 120Km/h. I was hoping to never see one again.
Beetles today, people tomorrow. (Score:2)
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RADIO-CONTROLLED CYBORG BEETLES! (Score:1)
RADIO-CONTROLLED CYBORG BEETLES!
Beetles with some brain chips... BEETLE POWER!
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. *makes a pitch to Warner Bros.*
This is awesome (Score:2)
I was afraid there was going to be stupid tether wire, but NO TETHER. Truly remote controlled this time.
How do you debug it? (Score:2)
Would you need an addbug to troubleshoot it?
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You debug it with a shoe. Didn't you see Fifth Element?
crude (Score:2)
Their control method seems very crude to me. They have no control over the bugs little brain at all. If you want it to take off, give it an electric jolt, and it will fly away. Like hitting cow with a stick. Sure, that works. If you want it to stop, give it a bigger jolt, and it will drop out of the air. Like hitting a someone over the head with a bigger stick. Left and right: shock one wing so it will twitch and not work properly for a moment while the other wing goes on, and voila, steering. This is not
Won't someone please... (Score:2)
think of the insect children!
What would Jesus do? (Score:2)
Is it just me or does anyone else think messing with creatures in this way is off-the-scale barbaric and shouldn't be done whatever the reason?
It really scares me that there's apprarently no limit to the depths governments and universities will sink in the name of money or whats laughably called 'defence' (read: to kill more people more efficiently).
How far will mankind go towards the worst visions of the future before enough decent people say 'no more'?
breaking news (Score:2)
Assassin Bugs (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
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You do realise that coconuts don't come from Africa?
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Come on.
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While I don't agree with the slippery slope argument, the AC has a point. All responses to him at this point have used the killing metaphor, but I don't think that's appropriate. This process is more akin to torture.
We have rules for war that disallow such things as dumdum bullets designed to maim the hell out of people. We have rules against torture (though the US doesn't seem to concern itself with following them). It's clear to me that even in situations where killing is sanctioned, such as war, we d
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Except that it appears that they don't actually have brain control. They just poke the beetle to make it move.
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LMAO, looks exactly like the GNAA posts.
Actually, it was meant to be a take-off of newsmax. Besides, I do not endorse racist content in any way. Just because you hate white people doesn't mean that I have to.
because it's blindingly obvious to the rest of us
Whose the "rest of us"? Liberals don't speak for the people, they want to arrange them in a way they think is best for them, but you don't echo their demands, believe in their culture, or support their causes, you know, that guns, god, and religion, c
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LMAO, looks exactly like the GNAA posts.
It was meant to be a takeoff of Newsmax posts.