Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Either and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says something in you
Speaker 1: it gitters like a moth. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: bo and I'm Joe McCormick. So we've talked about robots
Speaker 1: plenty of times on this podcast, sure, more than plenty
Speaker 1: of times. Probably, right, we've talked about them too many times,
Speaker 1: that's what you're getting at. Yes, yes, I'm saying that
Speaker 1: we should never do another episode about robots ever again.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's something else we've talked about a
Speaker 1: few times that, or at least you two have talked
Speaker 1: about a few times. I've only talked about the one
Speaker 1: time just bugs. Well, to be fair, I wasn't really
Speaker 1: talking about bugs that last time either. It was spiders. Well,
Speaker 1: the future of insects is clearly the most important type
Speaker 1: of future to talk about. But but I thought that
Speaker 1: maybe you know, Joe. I know Joe hates robots because
Speaker 1: when I when I bring up the subject of robots
Speaker 1: near Joe, he gets this red look in his eye
Speaker 1: and he says, program to destroy. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that's all about. But anyway, I know he loves bugs,
Speaker 1: and I thought maybe we could ease you back into
Speaker 1: the robot discussion, Joe by talking about a combination of
Speaker 1: bug and robot. I think that's a great idea, and
Speaker 1: I've even got a sort of practical way to introduce
Speaker 1: the discussion. Okay, So making robots is hard, right, Making
Speaker 1: a good mobile robot to go around and do different
Speaker 1: kinds of things, it's not easy. Sure, mechanics alone are
Speaker 1: incredibly complex, and designing a a machine that can do
Speaker 1: the sort of stuff that we do is not a
Speaker 1: trivial task. Okay, now let's make the problem even harder.
Speaker 1: Let's make that robot really small. Now you've massively compounded
Speaker 1: the problem. Yeah, yeah, because and anything that that's bulky
Speaker 1: or heavy is going to be a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: more impossible to include. Yeah, like exactly, battery ease and
Speaker 1: solar panels, all kinds of things like that, Any kind
Speaker 1: of mechanism that creates movement, any sort of engine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even just the computer equipment sure has wit takes up space. Okay,
Speaker 1: now let's make it even harder. Okay, let's make it smart.
Speaker 1: Let's say that it needs to make some kind of
Speaker 1: decisions based on its environment. So it's gonna need sensors
Speaker 1: of some kind to gather data about where it is,
Speaker 1: and it's going to need a pretty robust computing system
Speaker 1: to be able to make decisions based on that data.
Speaker 1: So you're just now you're making an impossible task. Here. Wait,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make it even more impossible. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: say it's it's got to be small and smart, and
Speaker 1: it's got to carry its own energy source for a
Speaker 1: decent amount of time, you know, not something that's going
Speaker 1: to run out of juice in ninety seconds. Okay, So
Speaker 1: now you're talking about something that you can't just power externally,
Speaker 1: like uh, you know, we we've talked about nanobots a
Speaker 1: little bit in the past. One of the common uh
Speaker 1: solutions I see to nanobots, because this is a problem
Speaker 1: when you get down to that size, how do you
Speaker 1: power something like that is the idea of using an
Speaker 1: external source like electromagnetism or ultrasonic frequencies. But you are
Speaker 1: saying even actually just have wires on them and they
Speaker 1: try not to show them in the picture. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: really do. So you you were actually saying that this
Speaker 1: would need to be a robot that would carry with
Speaker 1: it its own ability to to you know, power itself, right,
Speaker 1: whether that be say, solar panels or a battery or
Speaker 1: whatever it is that's going to take up space and
Speaker 1: make this all really difficult. But you know what, we've
Speaker 1: already touched on it now that there's something in existence
Speaker 1: that fits pretty much all of these criteria reasonably well.
Speaker 1: And that's an insect. It's small, it's smart. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not that smart, but it's it's relatively for its
Speaker 1: sizee pretty it's smart in the robots since right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: compared to say a wind up toy that only will
Speaker 1: go in one direction until it knocks into something. It's smart, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it carries its own energy. You just you don't
Speaker 1: even have to plug it in. You just feed it
Speaker 1: some apple slices or some some delicious you know, bodily
Speaker 1: fluids whatever it likes to chow down on. A different
Speaker 1: insects have different tastes. That's fair, And this is not
Speaker 1: an idea original to us. In fact, the people way
Speaker 1: up there, hidden in their scary science bunkers are going
Speaker 1: exactly down this path, aren't they. Yeah, it's it's the
Speaker 1: idea of marrying insects with robots, not literally, I mean
Speaker 1: you're actually just you're incorporating robotic elements into a an insect.
Speaker 1: You're not actually having to get married cyborg. Yeah, insect boards.
Speaker 1: So we're letting it get away from us, just like
Speaker 1: a bug would. No, uh, this is this is entirely true.
Speaker 1: There have been many, many projects to look into how
Speaker 1: can we take advantage of the fact that the earth
Speaker 1: is covered with lots and lots of insects and if
Speaker 1: we could only bend them to our will, then we
Speaker 1: would have an incredible tool for things like search and rescue.
Speaker 1: And that was part of what inspired the Defense Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency. And it's just dark because people want
Speaker 1: to know what DARPA stands for. No, they don't. It's DARPA.
Speaker 1: When I hear DARPA, I think is that an acronym
Speaker 1: um it's it's responsible for a lot of the technologies
Speaker 1: that have filtered down from the military into our daily lives,
Speaker 1: stuff that you know was originally part of the DARPA project,
Speaker 1: like like the Internet is a great example. The Internet
Speaker 1: was originally DARPA project. That's where ARPA net came from
Speaker 1: and so uh you know it's it's also responsible for
Speaker 1: some kind of scary science fictionee horror movie type of science,
Speaker 1: including turning bugs into cyborgs. So they their program is
Speaker 1: specifically called the Hybrid Insect micro Electro McCann Nickel Systems
Speaker 1: or high MS, because I guess that's slightly better than
Speaker 1: surgery on cockroaches in it right, it's him MS, now, okay,
Speaker 1: him MS. So the goal is to create cyberna in insects.
Speaker 1: And here's a quote from the DARPAST solicitation document. This
Speaker 1: was written back in two thousand six when the project
Speaker 1: was started. DARPAST seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to
Speaker 1: create insect cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within
Speaker 1: insects during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing person exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it continues. The healing processes from one metaphor metamorphic stage
Speaker 1: to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable
Speaker 1: bioelectro mechanical interface to interface to insects as compared to
Speaker 1: adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated,
Speaker 1: various micro systems payloads can be mounted on the platforms
Speaker 1: with the goal of controlling insect locomotion since local environment
Speaker 1: and scavenge power. So what all this is saying basically
Speaker 1: is that if you, if you put these little bits
Speaker 1: into these insects when they're still growing, it will allow
Speaker 1: us to integrate the technology more fully into them as
Speaker 1: adults than it will be to just like be like
Speaker 1: I pasted a computer on. Yeah, exactly, though there's plenty
Speaker 1: of room for pasting computers on, as we will see
Speaker 1: later in this very poject rightly, especially if you happen
Speaker 1: to watch that fifteen minute video, What is the actual goal?
Speaker 1: What do they want these insect robot hybrids to do? Right?
Speaker 1: What was the chat? Alright? Here? Here's the also from
Speaker 1: that solicitation. The final demonstration goal of the high MS
Speaker 1: program is the delivery of an insect within five meters
Speaker 1: of a specific target located a hundred meters away using
Speaker 1: electronic remote control and or Global positioning system GPS. Although
Speaker 1: flying insects are of great interests e g. Moths and dragonflies,
Speaker 1: hopping and swimming insects could also meet final demonstration goals.
Speaker 1: Why not crawling though? Well, I'm sure that that was
Speaker 1: also in there just wasn't specifically mentioned. In conjunction with delivery,
Speaker 1: the insect must remain stationary, either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed.
Speaker 1: The insect cyborg must also be able to transmit data
Speaker 1: from d D relevant sensors, yielding information about the local environment.
Speaker 1: The sensors can include gas sensors, microphone video, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You can kind of get the sense based on the
Speaker 1: language in the DARPA directive that they're thinking about surveillance. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that seems to be the main thing in
Speaker 1: their minds is what we want to get bugs that
Speaker 1: can go out and look at what's going on over
Speaker 1: there a hundred meters away and and see what it is. Yeahah, yeah,
Speaker 1: see what's up Now. That surveillance may be something you know,
Speaker 1: clandestine like spying, or more likely something like search and rescue,
Speaker 1: or you know, you're you're getting some reconnaissance in an
Speaker 1: area that would be dangerous to send human beings into,
Speaker 1: or that you're not sure whether it's dangerous to send
Speaker 1: human beings into. Rather than sending out red shirts, we
Speaker 1: can send out bugs well, especially for something like like
Speaker 1: an area, consider an area that's got radioactive contamination for example.
Speaker 1: You know, bugs are much more hardy at resisting that
Speaker 1: than we humans are, So using a a bug in
Speaker 1: order to check that kind of area makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: This makes a lot more sense than what I was
Speaker 1: thinking they would use them for, which is delivering ammunition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you run out of bullets on the field, a
Speaker 1: swarm of beetles come at you with cartridges. Each one
Speaker 1: has one. They drop it into your magazine. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: that that's probably further down the road. That's that's a
Speaker 1: little it's a little ambitious for this first project. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's pretty ambitious anyway. A lot of the stuff we've
Speaker 1: talked about or that we've looked into as uh part
Speaker 1: of the the research for this podcast, UM, we're still
Speaker 1: in the relatively early stages of this kind of technology.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile you've got other people working on different approaches.
Speaker 1: But I'll talk about that towards the end of the podcast.
Speaker 1: It's just interesting to me that now we're starting to
Speaker 1: see the fruition of some of this work. UM. And
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast in early November
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, there have been a couple of stories
Speaker 1: that have come out about stuff like this, which is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. I mean, it's eight years after the
Speaker 1: initial solicitation. Well, I think we should talk about a
Speaker 1: few examples of the research in blending the insect with
Speaker 1: the robotic. Obviously, we can't talk about all the research today,
Speaker 1: there's too much, but I think we should pick a
Speaker 1: few of the cool ones and zero in on those.
Speaker 1: The first one I would like to talk about is beatles.
Speaker 1: So in this case, we're talking about the insect, not
Speaker 1: not the band beatle board fit cultural friends who are
Speaker 1: extremely fixated upon this cultural refer. I may have watched
Speaker 1: the YouTube video with the main credit sequence of that
Speaker 1: show several times yesterday, and um, I get I wanted
Speaker 1: to arrange some harmonies where we'd each sing a partner
Speaker 1: a big bad beetle borgs. But yeah, that didn't come together.
Speaker 1: It just didn't happen. It was a cultural reference that
Speaker 1: was lost on me, to be perfectly honest. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about using beatles as these hybrid micro electroco
Speaker 1: mechanical systems. The example would be flower beetles, the ones
Speaker 1: I want to look at. That's flower with the W,
Speaker 1: not with an O U. So this example is a
Speaker 1: project that was part of the HIGHMMS directive. Uh and
Speaker 1: it was a group of researchers from UC Berkeley who
Speaker 1: created a system to steer the flight path of cyborg
Speaker 1: flower beetles like Mecan Arena Torcata Hope, I said that, right,
Speaker 1: Mecan Arena Torcata. Yeah, and uh co Tennis Texana. And
Speaker 1: so flower beetles are a group of scare of beetles,
Speaker 1: and they're thought to make good candidates for flying cyborgs
Speaker 1: because of their size and sort of the robustness, like
Speaker 1: they're thick and powerful a they're basically terrifying. Um so,
Speaker 1: so they can also carry a lot of weight exactly right,
Speaker 1: so they can you can put a bunch of equipment
Speaker 1: on them and they'll still be able to fly. Uh
Speaker 1: google these things if you want. They are not spend le,
Speaker 1: especially in Torcado, the bigger one. They're pretty thick, pretty terrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the researchers at Berkeley built an electronic system consisting
Speaker 1: of quote, neural stimulators, muscular stimulators, a radio transceiver equipped
Speaker 1: micro controller, and micro battery. So that's the first two things.
Speaker 1: There would be the means of stimulating the parts of
Speaker 1: the Beetle to get it to do what you want.
Speaker 1: Then you've also got the transceiver that's uh to get
Speaker 1: the command from the Beatle command center. And then you've
Speaker 1: got the micro battery, which is to power the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a lot of equipment to put
Speaker 1: on one insect. But did it work? Um? Yeah, it did.
Speaker 1: The Beatles could fly. So they put the system together
Speaker 1: and they mounted it on the Beatles pronotum, which if
Speaker 1: you picture like a dog or a cat, that would
Speaker 1: sort of be the back of the neck, top of
Speaker 1: the head area they have a neck. It's not really
Speaker 1: it's just sort of like the it's the same area though.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like like the human equivalent of the
Speaker 1: name right, not not the front of the face, but
Speaker 1: right back up right right front. Um, okay, So they
Speaker 1: mount that right back up there, and then they used
Speaker 1: remote radio signals to stimulate parts of the Beatle bodies
Speaker 1: for various aspects of flight control, including the ability to
Speaker 1: quote control flight initiation and cessation, modulate flight throttle and
Speaker 1: direction with a relatively simple interface. Um. And those quotes
Speaker 1: are from their paper in Frontiers and Integrative Neuroscience in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Called remote radio control of insect flight.
Speaker 1: So their YouTube videos, I recommend looking it up and
Speaker 1: watching them because it's pretty cool. They had reasonably good
Speaker 1: success with using radio to control beatle flight patterns. That
Speaker 1: was by flight patterns. Do you mean like basically telling
Speaker 1: them to go left or right? Or how how fine
Speaker 1: tuned finally tuned were they the flights? I haven't watched.
Speaker 1: I couldn't speak from experience. I mean, it's hard to
Speaker 1: tell how exactly what they're doing comput what the beatles doing,
Speaker 1: but it is divided into like left and right signals,
Speaker 1: and I think also making the beatle fly or getting
Speaker 1: it to stop. Yeah, we've seen a lot of videos
Speaker 1: actually that do the left or right? Is that's the
Speaker 1: essential command, right, you know, you don't have a a
Speaker 1: go forward or stop in a lot of these. It's
Speaker 1: more that, you know, they let the bug run and
Speaker 1: then they determine which direction the bug will run right
Speaker 1: and for the flight it really does seem directional, Like
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any you know, like let's control pitch
Speaker 1: and y'alls and all those flight things that pilots know about.
Speaker 1: And one thing we should point out is that a
Speaker 1: lot of this work isn't just to figure out how
Speaker 1: to control insects, but also to learn more about how
Speaker 1: insects fly and how they control their flight, and that
Speaker 1: there's a biological element to this. It's not just computer
Speaker 1: science or robotics or anything like that as well. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to have a really good understanding of how
Speaker 1: the system works, and luckily insects are relatively simple. But
Speaker 1: you know, flight really does put an extra kind of
Speaker 1: wrinkle into this entire endeavor, which I think is why
Speaker 1: insects like roaches have been the focus of a lot
Speaker 1: of study. Also, it's really easy to get a hold
Speaker 1: of them. There's a few running around probably at any
Speaker 1: given time. Yeah, well, let's first give that a good
Speaker 1: hard think and then yeah, now that now that we're
Speaker 1: now that we're schemed out, it's time to really turn
Speaker 1: up the creep factor for the rest of this conversation.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about robo roaches. Okay, Well, I want to
Speaker 1: talk eventually about roach boards for search and rescue, or
Speaker 1: what I call search and roach skewe. I saw that
Speaker 1: in the notes. I wasn't gonna but before I get
Speaker 1: to that, because that's a fairly recent development, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about robo roach, the insects cybernetics that comes
Speaker 1: straight into your home. Yeah, do you all know about this? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was that whole Kickstarter right, yeah, well before I
Speaker 1: think they existed before that, but the Kickstarter was was
Speaker 1: a big source of controversy, but they made their funding.
Speaker 1: We should go back and tell the story. So there's
Speaker 1: a little education tech company called Backyard Brains with the
Speaker 1: tagline neuroscience for everyone. Yeah. There they say, their point
Speaker 1: being that not everybody has access to a university with
Speaker 1: like an incredibly robust neuroscience laboratory. That's a good point,
Speaker 1: and that you know, people who want to learn things
Speaker 1: might want to be able to do some experimentation and
Speaker 1: uh and and kind of get you know, more involved
Speaker 1: in the field even if they don't have that direct access.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's kind of the goal. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot of that goal gets played out in uh, doing
Speaker 1: some home surgery on bugs. Right. So this project that
Speaker 1: they initiated is called robo roach, and it's a cybernetic
Speaker 1: modification kit for cockroaches which allows users to perform surgery
Speaker 1: on a cockroach and implant electrodes into the cockroaches antennae.
Speaker 1: They use electrical pulses to stimulate the neurons in those antennae. Now,
Speaker 1: why would you want to stimulate the neurons of the
Speaker 1: antennae and a cockroach Because that's how they that's how
Speaker 1: they steer. That's exactly right. You can control cockroach movement
Speaker 1: if you can control the nerve cells in the each
Speaker 1: antenna A right, it's not it's not precisely how they steer,
Speaker 1: but rather how they you know, they take an information
Speaker 1: from their antenna and use that to decide when to turn,
Speaker 1: because you know they'll they'll be brushing up against something
Speaker 1: and go like, oh, I'm I'm hitting a wall on
Speaker 1: my right, so I should veer a little bit more
Speaker 1: to the left. If you were to install, say an
Speaker 1: electrode that would stimulate such a response to say there's
Speaker 1: a wall here, even if there isn't a wall there,
Speaker 1: you can make the cockroach turn right. It's like electric reins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's disturbing to watch. Right. So in the robo
Speaker 1: roach kit, these electrical impulses come from a four point
Speaker 1: for Graham electronic backpack unit. They call it a backpack,
Speaker 1: and this backpack can be controlled through Bluetooth by an
Speaker 1: app on your smartphone. Simply swipe your finger across the
Speaker 1: cockroach illustration in the desired direction, and the cockroach will turn.
Speaker 1: It'll sendol electrical charge to the right antenna or the
Speaker 1: left antenna, and it'll it'll make it say, hey, go
Speaker 1: the other way. They're not permanently, right, No. The creators
Speaker 1: claimed that this usually only works for some number of
Speaker 1: minutes at a time, after which the cockroach sort of
Speaker 1: gets used to the false signals and ignores them, and
Speaker 1: then you have to give it a rest and and
Speaker 1: just not mess with it for a while before the
Speaker 1: roach is ready to be mind controlled all over again.
Speaker 1: Did you watch the fifteen minute instructional video of how
Speaker 1: to do this? I watched some videos. I don't think
Speaker 1: I watched one that was fifteen minutes. I did. I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you a rundown on how this works.
Speaker 1: So I did watch some on how the surgery works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably saw some of this then, Okay, So you
Speaker 1: start off by you have to sedate the cockroach by
Speaker 1: putting it into cold water, which lowers its temperature. And
Speaker 1: it's a cold blooded animal, so once it's temperature is
Speaker 1: at a certain level, you know, it's activity essentially stops.
Speaker 1: It's still alive, it's just it's it's not tickling around,
Speaker 1: and it's hypothetically not feeling anything. Yeah, it's hypothetically not
Speaker 1: feeling anything anyway, but specifically not feeling at least not
Speaker 1: pain as we would understand it um at any rate.
Speaker 1: Then you take us some some uh sand paper, and
Speaker 1: you rub the top of the back of its head
Speaker 1: so that you can make it a little bit rough.
Speaker 1: You create like an abrasive surface so that you can
Speaker 1: apply glue. Yep, superglue. Uh, super glue, they have a
Speaker 1: specific brand. They recommend. You then attached the little circuit
Speaker 1: board the backpack onto the superglue. Uh. Then you have
Speaker 1: to do some some crazy uh alterations of the cockroach.
Speaker 1: One of that is you have to poke a hole
Speaker 1: in its outer shell. I guess you could say, yeah,
Speaker 1: the carapace off to the little bit off to one side,
Speaker 1: so you don't hit its esophagus because obviously you don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. Uh. And then you put the
Speaker 1: ground antenna about a millimeter in there, put some superglue
Speaker 1: onto the end of that, and then shove it in
Speaker 1: a little further so that way it holds itself tight.
Speaker 1: Then after you know, knock out the cockroach a couple
Speaker 1: more times because it's gonna wake up eventually. You didn't
Speaker 1: have to clip off the end of an antenna about
Speaker 1: down to about a quarter to an eighth of an inch,
Speaker 1: insert the electrode, like the left electrode into the left antenna,
Speaker 1: and use some superglue so it holds inside there. Same
Speaker 1: with the right antenna. And then you have to kind
Speaker 1: of group all that together, so you get the wires
Speaker 1: out of the way and you tamp that down and
Speaker 1: then you glue that down as well, so that way
Speaker 1: it doesn't get out there and snag on stuff as
Speaker 1: the turns around. Yeah, so the uh, I just gave
Speaker 1: you a very short description of what goes on in
Speaker 1: this fifteen minute long video that I watched immediately after
Speaker 1: I had just eaten lunch and I thought, well, that
Speaker 1: was a mistake. And and and then they demonstrate the
Speaker 1: app working and they have little roach running around on
Speaker 1: the ground and then make it turn left and right
Speaker 1: and it turns very quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it works.
Speaker 1: It looks like it must have felt like it was
Speaker 1: crashing into something. It's like, I know, over here, which
Speaker 1: is kind of I mean, it's hard to read the
Speaker 1: feelings of a cockroach. But a lot of people were
Speaker 1: very upset by this, especially when they launched that Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaign that I mentioned at the top of this section. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the gig starter campaign. It met its goal. It was
Speaker 1: at ten thousand and it got funded up to twelve
Speaker 1: thousand bucks, I think, but there was a lot of outcry.
Speaker 1: I personally don't know what to think about it, because,
Speaker 1: on one hand, I agree, just intuitively, it seems kind
Speaker 1: of cruel and like a mad scientist. Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: a lot of defenses, I guess I can get into
Speaker 1: a minute. On the other hand, though, from my feelings,
Speaker 1: if I see a cockroach in my house, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kill it. I'm gonna do everything I can to destroy
Speaker 1: this creature. It's not the kind of critter that, when
Speaker 1: you see it in your house, you think, oh, I
Speaker 1: can cohabitate with And so I wonder if the same
Speaker 1: is true of all these other people, Like if most
Speaker 1: people making the charge like this is cruel cockroaches are
Speaker 1: for stomping on and their lives quickly, don't prolong their suffering, right, Maybe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I mean either way, Like I write,
Speaker 1: I can see both sides of that. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: still sell the kid on their website. Of the people
Speaker 1: behind the project, I've answered some of the charges by
Speaker 1: claiming that well, I mean, for one thing, they say
Speaker 1: this is for education. It's not just for giggles, It's
Speaker 1: for a good purpose. Yeah. They also claimed that the
Speaker 1: users are instructed to perform the surgery under anesthesia. So
Speaker 1: I mean the cockroach, not the surge. I was about
Speaker 1: to ask that seems like a runkin a doctor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've seen I've seen a little shop of horrors
Speaker 1: that didn't go well for people they have. Also, they've
Speaker 1: also claimed that the electrical stimulation doesn't translate as pain
Speaker 1: for the cockroach. It's just like a sensation, like you're
Speaker 1: supposed to go that way, just terrifying panic. Maybe they didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't say I you would really have to say
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, I haven't had that metamorphosis. So
Speaker 1: they also say the procedure is not supposed to kill
Speaker 1: the cockroach, and at the end of the experiment they
Speaker 1: recommend clipping the electrodes off, returning the roach to a
Speaker 1: breeder colony. So can it you know it can return
Speaker 1: to being its roachy little self and not just do
Speaker 1: what the man says for the rest of its life.
Speaker 1: Our friend Christian Sager actually interviewed one of the people
Speaker 1: behind this thing, a one Greg Gauge, I believe, and
Speaker 1: you can see a video of that interview if you
Speaker 1: google stuff of Genius backyard Brains. I think that's the
Speaker 1: easiest way to get to it, probably rather than me
Speaker 1: reading out along your or l for you to type
Speaker 1: into a computer. Um so so yeah, if if you're
Speaker 1: interested in seeing more of their perspective on why and
Speaker 1: how they created these kits, then definitely go check that out.
Speaker 1: Did you guys also happen to see the spiker Box
Speaker 1: kit that they sell? I saw that but didn't read about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Spikerbox this is there's a little difference, a little
Speaker 1: bit of a tangent, but just a little bit. Um
Speaker 1: it's another way of studying neurological activity. This is a
Speaker 1: way of studying the neurological activity of an invertebrate. They
Speaker 1: specifically use a roach as the example, and in this
Speaker 1: case they nest ties the roach, same sort of thing
Speaker 1: they put in the ice water, and then they just
Speaker 1: gently cut off one of its legs, which they then
Speaker 1: say will grow back. The leg will grow back, so
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's one of it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to get a very specific pair of crutches so
Speaker 1: they can make its way through its roachy existence. But
Speaker 1: then what they did was they used the leg and
Speaker 1: attached the electrodes that they had to the leg, which
Speaker 1: surprised me that it was to the leg, not to
Speaker 1: the and that the leg has neurons in it that
Speaker 1: are still active even after being taken off of the
Speaker 1: rest of the insect, and that you can even hear
Speaker 1: like it it translates that into noise that you can
Speaker 1: listen to. You can touch the leg and the noise
Speaker 1: increases there like the leg has uh detected the touch,
Speaker 1: and that you could even get an app that connects
Speaker 1: to this kit that translates it into like a wave form,
Speaker 1: so you can see the wave form increase as stimulus
Speaker 1: uh affects this leg. And I just thought, well that's
Speaker 1: creepy too. Yeah, yeah, this this is sounding this is
Speaker 1: reminding me of our Frankenstein episode. Actually, Um, but all
Speaker 1: of this they do stress is in the interest of
Speaker 1: promoting science, especially in children. Um. You know people who
Speaker 1: again right, don't don't have access to two giant university labs,
Speaker 1: and who might not otherwise become interested in this kind
Speaker 1: of thing without chopping the legs off of cockroaches at
Speaker 1: a young age. Right now, Joe, you were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about this search and roach skew idea. I'm curious and
Speaker 1: would like to hear more. Allow me to paint you
Speaker 1: a little picture, please do. Wait? No, well, I should
Speaker 1: first say what the research is. So the researchers are
Speaker 1: from North Carolina State University a k a. Mad Science
Speaker 1: you as it shall forever be known now. They're led
Speaker 1: by a doctor Alper boz Kurt Or at least he's
Speaker 1: the one I've seen associated with. He's an associate professor there,
Speaker 1: and they've been working on the creation of cyborg cockroaches
Speaker 1: that can do things like be guided to stay within
Speaker 1: a digitally created fence or a fenceless boundary I think
Speaker 1: they called it. So if they sort of like crawl
Speaker 1: around in a little area and they reach the outer boundary,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the invisible fence for your dog,
Speaker 1: it'll cheer them back. Or they can track and recognize
Speaker 1: sounds based on high definition microphones mounted on their little
Speaker 1: cockroach bodies. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the invisible fence
Speaker 1: one is done using a Microsoft Connect. The connect itself
Speaker 1: tracks where the bugs are, and there's a there's a
Speaker 1: border that the connect to can see, and that's considered
Speaker 1: to be the the one that the bugs can't cross,
Speaker 1: And if the bug gets towards there, then the connect
Speaker 1: automatically sends a signal either to turn left or to
Speaker 1: turn right, whichever way is most attuned to the bugs
Speaker 1: orientation at that point, and the bug turns and goes
Speaker 1: back into the middle of the circle exactly right. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah, it's also it's also super super creepy
Speaker 1: to watch on video. So the creators call them biobots,
Speaker 1: but I'm just so partial to roach Board that I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep calling him roach Board, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: we are the roachboard ower your shields. We will be
Speaker 1: scuttled upon. They have not so far as I know,
Speaker 1: I've been able to link them together into a network,
Speaker 1: but when they do, that's game over focus. So but
Speaker 1: this roach board system isn't just for fun and education.
Speaker 1: The creators imagine it could save lives in a disaster area.
Speaker 1: Such as like a collapsed building. So sution, your nearest
Speaker 1: shopping mall has collapsed after an earthquake or right, and
Speaker 1: there are people trapped under the rubble, and we need
Speaker 1: to find them and get them out as soon as possible. Well,
Speaker 1: so here's where your roach board come in. At the
Speaker 1: disaster site, you you bring in your roachboard cube and
Speaker 1: you open it up and have them stream out of it.
Speaker 1: And this fleet of cockroaches are all wearing little cyborg backpacks,
Speaker 1: and they crawl throughout the collapse structure seeking out the
Speaker 1: sound of trapped humans. The high definition microphone capabilities allow
Speaker 1: their controllers or even the cockroaches themselves to distinguish between
Speaker 1: the sound of someone crying for help and the sound
Speaker 1: of a piece of concrete falling or any other kind
Speaker 1: of sound. And if they start to crawl away from
Speaker 1: where the action is, the invisible fence can turn them
Speaker 1: around and point them back where they need to be.
Speaker 1: I've also heard that they could help rescue team map
Speaker 1: the environment, like identifying where the wreckage has fallen and
Speaker 1: what areas might be impassable. And you know, like sure,
Speaker 1: it would take a whole swarm of of these roach
Speaker 1: boards in order to to do this following walls the
Speaker 1: way that you would if you're like trying to run amazed,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. And the way that would work is
Speaker 1: that they would record each little antenna bump um that
Speaker 1: they experienced through. Basically, the same technology that that controls
Speaker 1: those robo roaches just turned around on itself so that
Speaker 1: it's it's sending the signals back rather than accepting. So
Speaker 1: instead of controlling the roaches, it's it's learning from the
Speaker 1: roaches where the barriers are, right exactly. Yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so you know, it can make it a lot safer
Speaker 1: for human rescuers, um who who eventually would go in.
Speaker 1: It would take time, but all in the name of
Speaker 1: uh safety for everyone. Sure, if you get a chance.
Speaker 1: Here's another thing to look for on YouTube. The videos
Speaker 1: of the roach experiments conducted at North Carolina State in
Speaker 1: mad signs of you it's yeah, you should check this out,
Speaker 1: just just google it. Um. They've got roaches going through mazes,
Speaker 1: roaches being steered around, roaches inside the invisible fence, roaches
Speaker 1: responding to sound so that that may turn the correct way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, if you also attached to them
Speaker 1: sensors that can detect like chemicals or radiation or something
Speaker 1: like that. Then you get into that territory of of
Speaker 1: making these really integral part of a rescue team for
Speaker 1: something like a like a nuclear reactor accident. Absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could imagine this being used in like the Fukushima
Speaker 1: disaster and being able to tell very quickly, Uh, if
Speaker 1: if the one if there were people that need to
Speaker 1: rescue and to how dangerous is the environment that you
Speaker 1: have to go into, and thus make the proper preparations
Speaker 1: in order to get them out. Yeah. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you have this equipment, though, I'm wondering, if you have
Speaker 1: this equipment, like a high definition microphone or something like that,
Speaker 1: and you need them to search a large area, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you provide continuous power for that long? Well,
Speaker 1: you need some kind of onboard power source. And to
Speaker 1: help solve this problem, researchers at Case Western Reserve University
Speaker 1: have been working on a bio fuel cell that taps
Speaker 1: into roaches natural digestive systems to create a battery. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They use a couple of enzymes to break down sugars
Speaker 1: that the roaches produced during their own digestion, which then
Speaker 1: release electrons and power a little battery. The last time
Speaker 1: I heard anything about it was twelve, at which point
Speaker 1: the battery was not powerful enough to be useful in
Speaker 1: the field without having some kind of rechargeable battery attached
Speaker 1: to the backpack kit, which would kind of nullify the
Speaker 1: purpose of having a bio cell in the first place. Um,
Speaker 1: but it works, But the cockroach can't move anywhere. It's
Speaker 1: just to the enormous battery. But you know, but it's
Speaker 1: a pretty cool concept, and I think that they're trying
Speaker 1: to tweak it in order to get it get it
Speaker 1: to be more useful, right, Yeah, I think the NC
Speaker 1: state idea was using solar panels, wasn't it. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I'm not sure if they do
Speaker 1: use the solar panels or not. I know that the
Speaker 1: robo roach was using a just a tiny like cadmium battery,
Speaker 1: but I don't know about the NC State stuff. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: going back to Mad Science, you and Dr Boss Kurt
Speaker 1: uh moth bots, like, they're not just they're not just
Speaker 1: playing with cockroaches over there, they're playing with other invertebrates
Speaker 1: as well. So they have proposed a method for implanning
Speaker 1: electrodes in a moth during the pupil stage, while it's
Speaker 1: in the cocoon. So like Darka was talking about with
Speaker 1: getting him, getting them early. Yeah, the idea of getting
Speaker 1: that the sensors get embedded into the insect very early.
Speaker 1: That gives the the tissue the chance to to heal
Speaker 1: around it. These are scientific cocoon robbers. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's just if you're going to make an army
Speaker 1: of robotic moths, you gotta get them when they're young,
Speaker 1: you know, before they've really formed their ideology. It's really important.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's really it's so that you get
Speaker 1: it when the insect is still the caterpillar before it
Speaker 1: undergoes metamorphosis. Uh. And it allows for remote control of
Speaker 1: the muscles that control flight in moths. But the end
Speaker 1: goal that particular approach would be to create a literal
Speaker 1: swarm network of biobots, similar to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier with sending a swarm into a disaster area
Speaker 1: to kind of map it out, same sort of idea,
Speaker 1: but this way you would have an aerially based network
Speaker 1: of sensors to explore areas that might not be safe
Speaker 1: for humans, which is kind of cool. So like a
Speaker 1: cloud of sensors that is mobile. Yeah, we've talked about
Speaker 1: using swarm robotics in the past before, say, for example,
Speaker 1: in exploring other planets or exploring exploring asteroids and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It has a lot of advantages. One of
Speaker 1: them is a redundancy. Another one is that you can
Speaker 1: use algorithms to sort of average out there the different
Speaker 1: things they experienced, the full full picture. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of the information that they're looking at right
Speaker 1: now is not necessarily to have, Like it's not like
Speaker 1: the step is going to be to have this swarm network.
Speaker 1: It's more like, we're learning about the flight mechanics of
Speaker 1: moths right now, so that we can make sure that
Speaker 1: if you want a moth to turn left, you send
Speaker 1: the proper signals for the moth to turn left. Because
Speaker 1: unless until you know how that works, you can't just say,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll just power the left wing. That's not
Speaker 1: gonna it's not gonna help get you very far now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the neat thing is that are actually learning about
Speaker 1: the biology and the physiology of of moths in flight. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to use that as a way to
Speaker 1: get to this end goal. And it also means that
Speaker 1: other scientists who may not be looking at the biological
Speaker 1: element of this, maybe they want to create purely mechanical robots,
Speaker 1: can still look at the study and learn from it. Yeah. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: because there is that question of of you know, like,
Speaker 1: maybe if we're in the end entirely skeeved out by
Speaker 1: by putting bugs to our own uses, that we could
Speaker 1: do the synthetic ones, or or even even if it's
Speaker 1: not a question being schemed out, it might just be
Speaker 1: a question of which which pathway ultimately is going to
Speaker 1: get us to where we need to be the fastest
Speaker 1: and most efficient way possible. Right. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: right now, insects of a huge head start. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: already have hardware and software that's that's very lightweight and
Speaker 1: strong and useful, right right, So bending them to our
Speaker 1: will is certainly one of those things that might be
Speaker 1: a lot easier than having to reinvent the insect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this a tiny bit before, um
Speaker 1: in our episode about bees The Future of Bees Robobs
Speaker 1: right right, that was published in May, if you if
Speaker 1: you want to go back and listen to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we also is that the one where we
Speaker 1: talked about the delf Li micro, the tiny little uh
Speaker 1: it's extremely small drone and the battery last few minutes.
Speaker 1: I you know, we talk a lot about insects on
Speaker 1: this show when Jonathan isn't around, So I'm as special
Speaker 1: to be here today. No, no, no, that that one
Speaker 1: was was not insect at all. That was full drone.
Speaker 1: The purely there were actually but yeah, they're actually quite
Speaker 1: remembers our episodes better than we do. Then let us know,
Speaker 1: guys some message, But now they're they're there. Definitely are big,
Speaker 1: big issues there, Like the idea of of having to
Speaker 1: power the flight definitely has its own engineering problem. Whereas
Speaker 1: if you're using a flying insect, since we already talked
Speaker 1: about it has that onboard power system already, Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: already taken care of that. As long as whatever payload
Speaker 1: the insect is carrying isn't so heavy as to prevent
Speaker 1: it from flying, you're good to go. Okay, And I
Speaker 1: think we should acknowledge that we should save it for
Speaker 1: another podcast. The fact that, I mean, if you're not
Speaker 1: having ethical problems with insects, you might as well push
Speaker 1: it a little farther and create some cyborg mammals to
Speaker 1: do your reconnaissance for you. Borg bats, borg rats. People
Speaker 1: are working on stuff like this, and this should be
Speaker 1: a whole other creepy Times podcast. Yeah yeah, yeah, maybe, well,
Speaker 1: let's not hog the creepy in this one. Maybe we'll out.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll spread it out by putting some happy fuzzy
Speaker 1: episodes between now and then we'll talk about the future
Speaker 1: of cuddling. Yeah, well with rats that will one day
Speaker 1: becomes think it will be the Cuddle app. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a different that's different show entirely. I've
Speaker 1: got a piece of listener mail that I think we
Speaker 1: should get into. Let's here before we wrap it up
Speaker 1: for today. Unless y'all have anything else. That is about
Speaker 1: all I have to say about cyborg insects. I'm ready
Speaker 1: to bug out of this one. Oh but yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: we get such terrific letters from you guys sometimes, and
Speaker 1: so we are going to start a listener mail section.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, so often it's the request to do
Speaker 1: a certain kind of episode, and we've turned some of
Speaker 1: those into episodes. This wasn't that, so I just thought
Speaker 1: i'd read it. This was from Katie on Facebook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she says, I thought you'd be amused to know that
Speaker 1: while listening to your podcast on catching a Time Traveler,
Speaker 1: just as you began giving time travelers incentives to show
Speaker 1: up and announce themselves, my iPod went from more than
Speaker 1: charged to flat dead. I seriously had a moment where
Speaker 1: I believed that a time traveler was going to show
Speaker 1: up and announced themselves to me right then and there.
Speaker 1: It turns out this didn't happen, and I continue to
Speaker 1: be disappointed with people of the future. Yeah, clearly the
Speaker 1: people of the future could teach Generation X a thing
Speaker 1: or two about really being slackers. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: I thought I knew everything there was to know about
Speaker 1: being a slacker. You know, Katie, if you want to
Speaker 1: write us back, what I actually want to know now
Speaker 1: is which part of the incentives we were talking about
Speaker 1: when that happened, Like, was was it the part about
Speaker 1: humiliating Jonathan or the part about promising them riches in faith?
Speaker 1: I think the humiliating Jonathan has got to be the
Speaker 1: right answer, because that's the biggest temptation of anyone I know.
Speaker 1: They seemed to take every opportunity. Don't encourage you? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's wrap this up. If any of you guys have
Speaker 1: some fun comments, or you have questions, or you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes, let us know. Send us an
Speaker 1: email our addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter
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Speaker 1: FW thinking. Just search FW thinking and Facebook will pop
Speaker 1: right up and leave your comment there. We read all
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