Nah, I thought this has got to be a joke:
The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.
But no…there is actually a DARPA call for proposals.
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. Multidisciplinary teams of engineers, physicists, and biologists are expected to work together to develop new technologies utilizing insect biology, while developing foundations for the new field of insect cyborg engineering. The HI-MEMS may also serve as vehicles to conduct research to answer basic questions in biology.
The final demonstration goal of the HI-MEMS program is the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific target located at hundred meters away, using electronic remote control, and/or global positioning system (GPS). Although flying insects are of great interest (e.g. moths and dragonflies), hopping and swimming insects could also meet final demonstration goals. In conjunction with delivery, the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed. The insect-cyborg must also be able to transmit data from DOD relevant sensors, yielding information about the local environment. These sensors can include gas sensors, microphones, video, etc.
Although the idea of having a remote controlled dragonfly is very cool, I am very pessimistic, and have to dash a little cold water on the plan.
OK, so the idea is to put a small chip into a larva, and when it undergoes metamorphosis and reorganizes its nervous system, it would integrate itself with the circuit in such a way that signals transmitted to the chip could control its behavior. I can sort of see what they want to do, but no—it's pure fantasy. We don't have the understanding of insect neurodevelopment to be able to even come close to what they want.
Chips aren't going to be integrated, they're going to be encapsulated. I've done long-term studies of larval insect nervous systems, and they've got a surprisingly good immune system—hemocytes are going to flock to whatever is implanted, and it's going to be well glopped up with cells and proteins. It's not an absolutely insurmountable problem, but it's going to take some fancy materials science work and some kind of biologically-relevant coating to make it work.
To get any kind of reliable connection with neuronal elements, this chip is going to have to be layered with appropriate signaling/pathfinding molecules. I suppose that could be done, but you'd have to know what molecules would work, and you'd have to be able to pattern a chip with them. We know some of the molecules involved, but most of the work done with them have been disruptions, not attempts to guide axons down novel paths. It's been done with neurons in vitro, but seems impractical in vivo. Once upon a time, I teased axons into growing down aberrant pathways, but that was all done with microsurgery, not molecules. Again, maybe someday something limited could be done along these lines, but it's a long way off.
If we could string subsets of axons along to form connections with the circuitry on a chip, we still wouldn't know how to control the animal. Even an insect nervous system is incredibly complex, full of utterly mysterious dendrites and axons and synapses that do important things, we just don't know what. This is like sending some guy who knows next to nothing about avionics into a 747 with a pickaxe, a voltmeter, and a 9V battery, and telling him to hack into the wiring and take control of the plane. It may not be impossible, but it is the next best thing.
Given our man with a pickaxe, the other problem is that even if he does find the right wire to control the left aileron, he's probably going to make such a hash of everything else on the way to finding it that he's going to render the plane unflyable. Same with this insect; if the problem of incorporating a foreign body is overcome, if the problem of gently and biologically extracting a useful subset of the insect nervous system is overcome, if the problem of understanding how to impose a new and useful signal on that CNS is overcome, you're still left with a bug whose brain and ganglia have been partially scrambled. It's not likely to be viable.
It's a ridiculously pie-in-the-sky idea, and someone in the Pentagon has clearly abandoned the reality-based community to come up with this one. There are little bits and pieces of the proposal that would be interesting to pursue, but as a whole, it's weirdly impractical nonsense. The guy behind it all seems to be competent, but what he does for real doesn't seem to apply very well to what these proposals demand—he's working with chips that are far larger and cruder than what this proposal would require.
It's a very weird proposal, and antithetical to my experience with government grants. Usually what's wanted is something that is extraordinarily well-justified, that is demonstrably doable, that advances from a solid, well-established foundation…and this one expects the opposite:
Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices or systems. Specifically excluded is research, which primarily results in evolutionary improvement upon existing state-of-the-art.
That sounds like a call for crackpots to me.
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Reminds me of the WWII plan to fit bats with little incendiary backpacks and release them en masse into Japanese cities.
Well, this is the same government that's spent so much money on remote sensing, so what do you expect? Also, it seems to me this guy has been watching too much of the Sci-Fi channel. One could easily imagine the horrific!, Frankensteinian! results of this experimentation forming the basis for a horror-movie plot.
I think it already has been done--take a close look at the current Administration.
I'm sure it could be done if we could only find and enlist the assistance of those alien intelligent designers.
Maybe the point of this project is to divert attention away from the embarassment of remote-viewing research.
Except that actually had a sucessful test. Maybe DARPA is willing to throw money at pie-in-the-sky proposals; if NIH or NSF tried something like that, they'd get smacked by Republicans in a second.
You think this is crazy? Did you catch that New Scientist article claiming that DARPA is paying scientists to accomplish the same thing in vertebrates?! (i.e. monkeys, sharks, rats, etc.)
Bro. PZ,
We theologians wash our hands of this. This puppy sits smack in the middle of the lab of the scientist gone wrong camp. But then again, if we flaunt atheism, then I suppose that each of us is our own "god" and that gives us freedom to bravely go wherever we want to go and do whatever we want to do and that includes being in bed with the military-industrial complex, or perhaps I should say, scientists are the modern-day Storm Troopers of the military-industrial complex. Alas, WWJD?
Bro. Bartleby
Ya know, if the government has money to burn, they might want to do something about all the abandoned (flooded and therefore useless) vehicles parked under the highway bridges in New Orleans.
It would be far simpler to build a mechanical dragonfly and remote-control it.
Perhaps they could start with the venom of Ampulex compressa:)
But wasn't that thing on Bush's back during the first Bush-Kerry debate simply an oversize, externally-worn, prototype of such a device?
More seriously, this is obviously such a pie-in-the-sky idea that no one could expect any reasonable results without endless and expensive research into all sorts of bizarre stuff. So it could be a great vehicle for funding research in embryology, neurology, improvements in & miniaturization of prosthetic devices, and so on. Sort of a "Strategic Defense Initiative" opportunity for biologists. I understand the Chinese are already far ahead in this research - no doubt there's a serious "missile-equivalent" gap already. Quick, phone your congressman.
Actually, at first I thought they want to make them wholly artificial -- this would be doable, I suppose. This -- is just totally out of orbit. I admit I give the military the right to pursue "crazy" projects, but not THAT crazy.
Oh come now, if teensy little parasitic wasps can figure out how to protect foreign material (in this case, their own eggs) from encapsulation, then surely Prof. Frink can do the same for the Remote-Operated Insect-Mounted Laser Death Beam! Any fule kno all you need to do is make the larval implants from liquid-crystal nanoceramic buckminsterfullerene with recombinant polydnaviruses.
For a long time DARPA has taken a high-risk high-potential-return approach to funding projects, hence the "Specifically excluded is research which primarily results in evolutionary improvement..." language. Everything -- computer science, medical research, engineering -- is supposed to be similarly cutting edge. I don't know if DARPA program managers end up having to comb through kooky proposals, or if the barriers are high enough that crackpots get screened out.
I agree that building a little MEMS flyer seems more likely, and people are working on it.
Actually, this program has had a successful test run; Karl Rove implanted a young George Bush with a similar device, and he and Dick Cheney have been taking turns with the controls ever since.
Aw, just read that N. Wells had the same idea first.
But then again, if we flaunt atheism
You know, when reality (for example, the actual atheist running this blog) doesn't fit your theory (for example, the strawman atheist stereotype you've created in your mind), it's the latter that is supposed to change.
Actually, this program has had a successful test run; Karl Rove implanted a young George Bush with a similar device, and he and Dick Cheney have been taking turns with the controls ever since.
....for sufficiently loose definitions of "success".
Okay, I'll play Devil's advocate here:
The basic proposal sounds out there, but so what? Probably what will happen is this will serve as a useful source of funding for entomologists and neuroscientists who are interested in learning about insect nervous systems despite having no misconception that they will ever be involved in building insect cyborgs. It's how the game is played: as much as most scientists would agree that knowledge is good for its own sake and that we shouldn't limit scientific funding to fields with immediate potential for practical applications, most scientists would also agree that you can't get funding making that argument. You have to claim your research is helping set the groundwork for some grand scheme that's still way out there.
This is DARPA we're talking about here: I seem to recall the internet they envisioned had something to do with a military communications system capable of surviving a nuclear assault (or at least not simply disrupted by one well placed strike). I don't think they ended up with what they started out looking for, but you really can't complain about the results...
Erf, I don't know if my earlier post is still being held for moderation because of the links, but the basics of this have already been achieved years ago with rats and roaches: place a remote that stimulates the whiskers/antennae and tail, and the animal responds by moving away from it.
This may want a more refined take on that experiment, but the basics of control were achieved years ago.
This puppy sits smack in the middle of the lab of the scientist gone wrong camp.
Sounds like stereotyping - just because a scientist turns evil, does it mean they have to go insane as well?? Maybe the document sounds so crazy because it's a coded cry for help from a kidnapped scientist being held at Area 51.
WWJD? Maybe he'd say "I came not to bring peace, but cyborg war bugs."
Someone should submit a proposal for designing butterflies with machine guns.
Will the government ban butterfly nets?
I'm not sure this is quite as farfetched as people are making it sound.
A lot hinges on what a "reliable bio-electromechanical interface" is. If that's a direct neural link, I agree that this is out-there stuff.
But if it could be something as simple as a little vibrator or electrical stimulator, maybe not.
A while back, some folks demonstrated radio-controlled rats that were really simple. (Except for the rat part, of course.) You just put a little "buzzer" vibrator thing over the whiskers on each side of the rat's face. If you stimulate the whiskers on one side, the rat instinctively turns away from that and goes the other direction.
This gives you simple left-right steering and the rat does the rest. With a radio-linked TV camera on the rat, you get a steerable "rat-cam."
Last I heard, they were going to try implanting the buzzers in the rats' cheeks, so that they couldn't be pulled or scraped off.
Something low-tech like that might work for bugs, if you can find just the right ways to annoy them into going left or right and up or down, without having to really control their wing-control circuitry, etc.
And then there's Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation to steer humans:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/dn7829
Good glayven, what a brilliant idea with the metamorphosizing and the debigulating, ng-hey. We will behold an unstoppable army of covert inverts, bw-ha, with the buzzing and the biting and the STINGING mm-hai it hurts hurts me...
Leftwingfox & Paul W, those things might work, but they specify that it can't be stuff simply glued to the bugs or simple improvement of a pre-existing technology. Damn scientists, always clinging to their outdated dogma and refusing new ideas like metamorphic Transformer cyborg bugs!
This bit was also fun: "In conjunction with delivery, the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed." Splice in a gene from one of those insects that bite off their wings when they land, maybe?
Well, it certainly gives a new meaning to the idea of your house being bugged...
Clearly, we must take immediate action against enemy cyborg-insects. I propose a Rapid Frog Deployment Program be implemented immediately at all sensitive government, military and nuclear sites. After all, we don't know how far ahead the Chinese or others may already be with this sort of research.
Alternatively, jamming the telemetry or using chemical insecticides could be attempted, but the frog method has three advantages: 1) physical destruction is more difficult to engineer countermeasures to than chemical or electronic interference, 2) it leverages frogs' existing expertise in the field of insect location, interception and destruction, and 3) it's much funnier.
Oops! I meant "remote viewing" in my post, not "remote sensing." Remote sensing is perfectly okay.
It strikes me that you don't need to manage all the details of motor control in order to fly an insect where you want. You just need to control where it wants to go, and that might be simpler. Maybe dramatically so.
Who knew that the insect cyborg cabal had more influence than the human/animal hybrid lobby?
I'm stocking up on "Raid"...
Not to poop the party, but it seems to me that the problem of directing insects to travel along specific paths was solved long ago.
All the military needs is giant squirtguns full of ant pheromones, capable of squirting laying out a stream between the gun and the target. Then you release the ant-cams.
Now, where do I pick up my funding?
Dan Brown, in one of his execrable SF-oid books, supposedly based on real tech, had military commandos using mosquito-sized flying surveillance devices. These things, if real, have got to cost a ton of money. Using real bugs would probably be cheaper.
Then, of course there's the "New toy" aspect...
OK, so the idea is to put a small chip into a larva, and when it undergoes metamorphosis and reorganizes its nervous system, it would integrate itself with the circuit in such a way that signals transmitted to the chip could control its behavior.
I think it may be sillier than that--they may not be aware that much neural reorganization occurs at metamorphosis at all. They're probably thinking you don't have to do any axon-guiding--you just park your electrodes next to whatever neurons are relevant, and then after the bug swaps its larval outside for its adult outside, the chip's now happily inside it and you're done! Hence why they only talk about "better healing" as the motivating advantage.
Duh, parasitic wasps beat us to it long ago, as Carl nicely reported last month (and PZ linked to some of the great video footage just recently). We just have to figure out how to make the wasps do our bidding to control the others...
'For a long time DARPA has taken a high-risk high-potential-return approach to funding projects, hence the "Specifically excluded is research which primarily results in evolutionary improvement..." language.'
Knew an ex-DARPA manager who jokingly said that they tried to break at least one law of physics every day. This may be pie-in-the-sky, but that's what DARPA is for; the crazy shit that even the most demented VC or angel investor wouldn't fund.
They funded Englebart's work on the Augmented Human Interface, which led to the GUI: they've justified their existence and funding for all eternity with that success.
Whether or not this will work (and I am on the side
that something similar eventually will be made to work)
you can bet there will be no calls from the religious
right about tampering with god's creation because it is
in the hands of Bush's military-industrial complex friends.
Just as long as Bush buddies stand to turn a profit from it, the Religious Republican Noise Machine will remain leashed
and silent.
Tom Engelhardt has a great Tomgram on weaponizing animals (which also references the New Scinetist article mentioned above):
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=66469
Sharks, bees, rats, dolphins, all future WMD.
Hmmm, you know i have an idea for this actually. Screw microchip-neural interface, you could do it much more simply by screwing with the insect's innate vestibular/directional system. Similarly to how homing pigeons can sense minute changes in the earth magnetic field (to find N, S, E, W) in 3 dimensions, I would bet (but just a guess here) that insect have a similar organ that contains tiny bits of iron that move in a gel. Find a way to manipulate that (radio waves, ambient room magnetism, etc) and you got a winner. Feel free to scoop ;)
So, you're saying a wasp can do to a cockroach, what the entire budget of DARPA can't? This of course, proves that the wasp is intelligently designed, because it can do stuff that...um...the only intelligent designers that everyone agrees exist, can't (OK, the argument needs work).
However, the dude who designed the cockroach should be sacked for leaving open such an obvious exploit.
Because no one ever suspects...the butterfly!
Sorry, I don't have anything else to add.
I would bet (but just a guess here) that insect have a similar organ that contains tiny bits of iron that move in a gel.
I don't know about that, but I do know that adult lobsters have a toroidal (donut-shaped) cavity with about three grains of sand in it. Down, to them, is the direction in which the grains of sand go and press on sensors on the inside of the cavity.
If you raise a lobster in a tank with iron filings on the bottom---so that it picks up grain of iron "sand" and they migrate into that cavity---you can have endless hours of fun waving a magnet near the lobster, watching it flip over, etc.
If we want to experiment with neural-silicon interfaces, wouldn't it be more useful to work on ways to replace failing mammalian neurons with chips? For example, one could cure Parkinson's by replacing the substantia nigra. Huntingtons, Alzheimer's, stroke, ALS, and other diseases might be amenable to the same sort of treatment. And all without sacrificing a single embryonic stem cell. (Yes, I know the basic problem with all this: we need better tools than a pickaxe* and more knowledge of the territory, but at least it's a useful goal for pie in the sky research.)
*actually, I think a pickaxe is overoptimistic: we're probably more at the "sharp rock" stage of technology as far as neurobiology is concerned...
I used this DARPA RFP as a sort of stealth intro to a section on immunity in my freshman Microbiology class this morning. The students LOVED it! Thanks PZ!
Uncle Don
Thanks for the lobster info, Paul! I would love to watch that experiment in motion (and then eat it).
Reminds me of the WWII plan to fit bats with little incendiary backpacks and release them en masse into Japanese cities.
Believe it or not, the bats were an improvement. The original plan called for pigeons. ;-)
I'm reminded of a website from a few years' back (sadly, since gone defunct) called "Experiments in Galvanism." Basically, an artist had implanted a tiny web server and some electrodes in a preserved frog body. You could click "Left leg" or "right leg" on a cartoon dead frog on-screen, and watch the actual dead frog kick in response via web-cam. (I would typically follow this with my Colin Clive impression.)
Quoted from the proposal:"Specifically excluded is research, which primarily results in evolutionary improvement upon existing state-of-the-art."
So they want research that is revolutionary not evolutionary.
Evolutionary not being all that popular a word with the current administration.
"That sounds like a call for crackpots to me."
And they included an address for me too. How thoughtful. Why bother with implants when I can train tiny humanoid robot cowboys to ride the bugs.YEE HAW!!! (Brokebug Mountain)
I have no doubt that PZ is right about the practical difficulties of achieving the stated goal. I also have no doubt that the guys at DARPA are well aware of those difficulties, plus a few others PZ didn't mention. The question is, is DARPA really going for remote-controlled cyborg Transformer insectaconbots... or is the goal more akin to "Well, even if we can't manage to create remote-controlled cyborg insects, we're going to learn a hell of a lot of new stuff along the way, and some of that nw stuff will just have to have useful applications! Oh, and if we actually do end up with remote-controlled cyborg Transformer insectaconbots, that's be pretty damned cool, too..."
Speaking of cockroaches and also of wasps ...
Doesn't the ARP in DARPA stand for Advanced Research Projects? Advanced research doesn't mean anything if the ideas aren't pedantic.
Ah , to be able to put a fly on the wall...
DoD has a long history of crackpot science. They did a fair amount of research into parapsychology in the 70s.
This could start a whole new arms race. "They've got cyber-flies? We need cyber-spiders." It could become the "old woman who swallowed a fly" war.
DoD has a long history of crackpot science. They did a fair amount of research into parapsychology in the 70s.
That was the CIA. DARPA is a different organization, entirely.
The "revolutionary, not evolutionary" phrasing is also standard DARPA boilerplate: they apply it to their computer science RFPs, as well --- DARPA feels that "evolutionary" work (that is, minor improvements to existing technologies and techniques) should be done by other agencies --- or should be done by industry on its own nickle.
Their budget is small, particularly by military standards. This RFP will probably produce a dozen projects that will fund part of a professor and one to three graduate students for a year or two. SEF has already linked to Japanese work of the "tickle the whiskers" sort that probably underlies part of the justification for this work.
In DARPA's 50 years of existence, I think they've spent a total of maybe $10 billion (or, about $200 million a year). In the 1960s through the 1980s they funded the development of the Internet and the mouse-driven GUI (spending maybe $500 million over all those years on that technology, if that much). That was an investment that has paid off handsomely --- I'm sure that the tax-revenues from the resulting industry for a single year covers all of DARPA's budget from its inception.
DARPA is also used to programs taking 20 years or more to become successful --- their autonomous vehicle work started in the 80s (with robotics roots going back to the 60s). Autonomous air and undersea vehicles are now at the "evolutionary" stage, while autonomous land vehicles are finally looking within reach.
You'll notice that the RFP has concrete, measurable criteria for success. It may be that no project funded under this RFP will meet those criteria, but some projects will make measurable progress toward the goals, and will result in a refined RFP in a few years. This process will continue either until someone else starts to pick up the tab because they see promise of an immediate payoff or the notion gets abandoned as unworkable.
END OF EXPERIMENT
Results:
1. When you chum the waters with "unique problems to solve" scientist will take the bait.
2. Scientist as problem solvers have the ability to focus on the problem at hand and delight in their own skills, especially when provided ample pats on the head by the non-scientists.
3. The generalist (those with no unique skills other than knowing how to get problem solvers to solve problems) create a structure that is problem rich -- the military-industrial complex.
4. Scientist are lured to this "problem rich" environment, an environment liken to a toy store, soon with childlike enthusiam, the scientist will solve any problem, be it an electric mini-gun, an ICBM, nerve gas, an H-bomb. To them, just fun problems to solve!
5. Without scientist, the military-industrial complex could not exist. When was the last time you watched a Fundamentalist fine tuning the software on a cruise missile?
6. To date: Not one theologian has invented a single cluster-bomb, let alone a cap-gun. In fact, removing all scientist from the experiment, this planet would be inhabited by a bunch of simply-minded folks that spend most of the day in their hammocks, their evenings gazing at stars (in wonder) and nights procreating (with smiles on their faces).
7. Scientists of the world unite! Beware of evil folks with promises of grants and labs full of problems to be solved!
(Experimented conducted by Bro. Bartleby and the Zoon Blauw Monastery investigative team of monks.)
"Not one theologian has invented a single cluster-bomb, let alone a cap-gun"
A few religious wars, the occasional pogrom against nonbelievers, an Inquisition or two, and several acts of genocide in the interests of forced conversion, yes. Cap-guns, no.
Have to agree with dm at 8:27. The pickaxe avionics metaphor seems about right, and if DARPA expects a working cyborg, well... I hope they're not holding their breath. But (presumably) the value of projects like this is to locate the edge of the applications envelope without worrying about methodology. Science as it was done in the eighteenth century, so to speak. Or maybe "Natural History" rather than science. You want to take along a 9v battery and a spool of wire just in case you manage to make something work, but the important tools are the voltmeter and your notebook. From that POV, it makes a lot more sense.
I think I'm going to talk about the "pickaxe approach to avionics" next time the opportunity presents itself though :-)
"We know some of the molecules involved, but most of the work done with them have been disruptions, not attempts to guide axons down novel paths. "
What you're saying is that the problem is almost solved. All you need is disruptions. If the insect is not going where you want it to go, you disrupt all movement. It will get where you want it to eventually.
If you have a hundred bugs, one of them will get there fairly soon.
This reminds me of a line from John le Carre's novel Smileys People.
"A Russian thinks that even the butterflies are spying on him"
Maybe them ole Soviets knew a thing or two.
"A few religious wars, the occasional pogrom against nonbelievers, an Inquisition or two, and several acts of genocide in the interests of forced conversion, yes. Cap-guns, no."
So true. But I still think the trophy goes to the atheist states, who in a generation or two make all the foolishness of the Christians seem ... well, how many actually were murdered during the Salem Witch trials? Oh yeah, 19. And the Spanish Inquisition? Records reveal over 2,000, some historians venture guesses of up to 130,000.
And now the atheist states: "20 million in the Soviet Union, 65 million in the People's Republic of China, 1 million in Vietnam, 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe, 150,000 in Latin America, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan." (CNRS, France. Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
As Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
Oh yeah, as for "forced conversions" ask folks from the former USSR or the PRC, or you can even read about it in the Eastern German STASI files that were recovered after the fall of the wall.
So, it kind of makes the former Popes look like "cap gun cops" ... and to top it off, the atheists pulled off their stunts all within a century. So, hands down, the atheists deserve the trophy!
Bro. Bartleby
My take on this is that it's probably a lame idea. Even if you can overcome all the technical problems the amount of payload which an insect can carry - for whatever dubious purpose - is going to be very limited indeed. There have been some attempts to control cockroaches with implants (I think by artificially stimulating their antennae), but it's a haphazard process and after a while the insect just habituates to the implant and ignores it.
Even if the payload is small enough and ways can be found around the technical problems the process of mass producing such cyborgs is going to be quite labour intensive.
Okay, Bro. Juniper can sniff out nachos and cheese from a hundred yards, so, is it possible to "train" or manipulate a flying insect to "be attracted to" explosives, or whatever chemicals involved? Then simply release these critters and follow the swarm to the explosives or roadside bombs.
If they really want to go for revolutionary tech, they should be tyring to build a dragon fly or butter fly or a bumble bee from scratch, biomemetics of such a aviatory anthropod would revolutionise all sorts of things, from the miniturised motorsystem of the muscles to the miniturised, self-replenishing power source that power them to the really neat avionics involved with insect flight.
Cybugs are just lame in comparison to a robotic bumble bee.
biomimetics even, biomemetics being the field of research that replicates the physiology of insects to make observers go "meh" in boredom.
Response to N. Wells:
But wasn't that thing on Bush's back during the first Bush-Kerry debate simply an oversize, externally-worn, prototype of such a device?
The comment is true, but the average insect is far more complex than Bush.
=my2c
BC
"Even if the payload is small enough and ways can be found around the technical problems the process of mass producing such cyborgs is going to be quite labour intensive."
The bug itself could be the payload if you want to use it as a chem/bio sensor. There are also a wide variety of MEMs devices that are small enough for a locust to carry a lot of them.
Ease of mass production is vital. If you need a biologist to carefully emplant each device, you have a novelty act, not a sensor. If you can make something that will migrate randomly through the bug's body until it is in the right spot, then a technician can stick ten devices into a hundred larvae each hour and hope that 5 of them work.
A wide variety of MEMs devices are not expensive to make. They can be 100 microns square and be made covering a 6" wafer. What is expensive is examination, testing and mounting each one. If you don't need to do that for mass production (you just toss out the ones that fail) your expenses could become reasonable.
The point is, the Darpa wants "revolutionary" not "evolutionary" proposals.
Someone has an idea, the think it may work, and their republican friends have gotten through Rummy to Darpa. The funding will be released, and the press releases and hype will start.
It won't work, the science isn't there yet, but someone will make a ton of money.
Yes. You can condition wasps to seek any of a wide variety of chemicals simply by giving them a whiff of that chemical and then feeding them sugar water.
(I think this only takes a few repetitions over tens of minutes, so they can be trained on-site to seek what you want, shortly before you want them to seek it.)
This has been done in an experimental chem-sensing apparatus, where the wasps stay in a box and you direct air into the box. If the air has what you've trained them to seek, they cluster at the air inflow end of the box.
This technology might not work "out of the box" if you actually release the bugs to go seek whatever it is. They might just fly away to "safety" or to seek mates or find a place to nest, instead. Still, I think some variant would likely work if you used the right stimuli. For example, if their overwhelming instinct is to seek safety, you might condition them with an antianxiety drug. If it's to seek mates, you might condition them with the right pheromones. By picking the right bug, stage in its life cycle, and combination of conditioning stimuli, I think you could make it work.
(You could also put an RFID device, and a self-destruct timer on each bug. Give them time to seek out the thing, and before they wander away, kill them. Then, at your leisure, come around with your RFID scanner to find the dead bugs.)
...which reminds me of a story.
MIT hackers have a long tradition of disrupting the annual Harvard-Yale game in various funny ways.
One year, a hacker simply went to the stadium where the game would be held, at the time of day the game would be held, every day for a couple of weeks leading up to the game, and fed the pigeons now and again for an hour or so.
While wearing a black-and-white striped shirt, and blowing a whistle before each feeding.