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March 17, 2006
Time to buy a flyswatter
The Pentagon wants to insert RF equipment into insects at the larval stage, so they'll pupate into hard-shelled surveillance drones, maneuverable by remote control.
"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," its advertisement says.
Embedding the control equipment deep in their bodies will overcome those annoying "instinctive behaviours for feeding and mating" that kept bugs with RFID tags glued onto them from performing "reliably" in past studies. (How pesky of living creatures to believe they own their own bodies! How annoying of them to want to live their own lives!) Among other things, Darpa wants the power to force the insects to "remain stationary indefinitely or until otherwise instructed." Sounds like a real barrel of laughs for the bugs.
The goal is for insects to covertly transmit video and "bug" conversations by lurking unseen in enemy hideouts with micro-transmitters strapped to their bodies.
Of course.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1731037,00.html
Even more details: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Military_Plans_To_Make_Insect_Cyborgs.html
- Katherine Albrecht
Posted by Katherine Albrecht at March 17, 2006 7:37 PM