Science is going many ways and most of them are pretty great, but if you have insectophobia, scientists making cyborg insects may not be your favorite. Scientists have made cyborg cockroaches, locusts, turtles, and what not. A team of researchers from Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) planned to fit dragonflies with electronics to control them with a remote. The plan seems to have been successful as the team had revealed the first flight of the cyborg dragonfly in a video.
The complexity of the structure of animal for their incredible maneuverability and is not something the humans can easily replicate; the bat bot for example. So instead of designing animal-like robots and sensors from scratch, scientists now make use of the natural systems, equipping the animals with artificial systems, turning them into cyborgs.
The research team has developed a system to control the insect using pulses of light piped into the neurons in the bug’s brain. This allows a human to steer the dragonfly just like a drone. The scientists aim to use the method for guiding pollination, delivering payloads, and spy in unsafe territories.
Watch the video of the DragonflEye with solar-powered backpacks flying for the first time:
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I hope no one is fooled by this. The government could not ask for anything better to increase the surveillance of the population. How long until we have cyborg humans for the same purpose? Yes, but am I paranoid enough?