ENGINEERS TO USE CYBORG INSECTS AS BIOROBOTIC SENSING MACHINES

A team of engineers from Washington University in St. Louis is looking to capitalize on the sense of smell in locusts to create new biorobotic sensing systems that could be used in homeland security applications.

Biological sensing systems are far more complex than their engineered counterparts, including the chemical sensing system responsible for our sense of smell. Although the sense of smell is a primitive sense, it is conserved across many vertebrate and invertebrate species.

For several years researchers have been studying how sensory signals are received and processed in relatively simple brains of locusts. They have found that odors prompt dynamic neural activity in the brain that allow the locust to correctly identify a particular odor, even with other odors present.

"Why reinvent the wheel? Why not take advantage of the biological solution?" Scientist explained. "That is the philosophy here. Even the state-of-the-art miniaturized chemical sensing devices have a handful of sensors. On the other hand, if you look at the insect antenna, where their chemical sensors are located, there are several hundreds of thousands of sensors and of a variety of types."

The team intends to monitor neural activity from the insect brain while they are freely moving and exploring and decode the odorants present in their environment.

Such an approach will also require low power electronic components to collect, log and transmit data. The team also plans to use locusts as a biorobotic system to collect samples using remote control.

Thanks to: sciencedaily.com