video://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCLBG9KeX4
Wow, this is something that could get out of hand like a scary movie. What if someone evil controlled like 100 million beetles or somethin’? Scary…
DARPA’s goal is to create cyborg insects that can fly at least 100 metres from their controller and land within 5 metres of a target, then stay put until commanded to buzz off again. How the insects will be guided to a target is yet another unresolved problem. “There were a bunch of ideas,” says Charles Higgins at the University of Arizona, who was involved in DARPA’s original brainstorming session for the HI-MEMS project. One was to use radio control to guide the moth, though that would mean emitting radio signals, which could be detected by the enemy. A second was to use GPS signals to guide the insect to its goal, and a third was to point the moth in the right direction and send it off with a pre-programmed series of instructions – for example, fly straight for 50 metres, then circle.
