{"id":1226,"date":"2009-02-21T14:01:54","date_gmt":"2009-02-21T21:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2009-02-21T14:01:54","modified_gmt":"2009-02-21T21:01:54","slug":"secret_agent_mo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=1226","title":{"rendered":"Secret agent moth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elsewhere on the robotics front, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is making good progress towards its goal of turning insects into remote-controlled surveillance and monitoring instruments. Three years ago, Darpa launched its Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.darpa.mil\/MTO\/Programs\/himems\/index.html\">HI-MEMS<\/a>) project, with the intent, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spectrum.ieee.org\/feb09\/7747\">described<\/a> by IEEE Spectrum, of creating &#8220;moths or other insects that have electronic controls implanted inside them, allowing them to be controlled by a remote operator. The animal-machine hybrid will transmit data from mounted sensors, which might include low-grade video and microphones for surveillance or gas sensors for natural-disaster reconnaissance. To get to that end point, HI-MEMS is following three separate tracks: growing MEMS-insect hybrids, developing steering electronics for the insects, and finding ways to harvest energy from the them to power the cybernetics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Papers presented this month at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.isscc.org\/isscc\/index.htm\">IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference<\/a> described breakthroughs that promise to help the agency fulfill all three goals. One group of researchers, from the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, has succeeded in inserting &#8220;silicon neural interfaces for gas sensors &#8230; into insects during the pupal phase.&#8221; Another group, affiliated with MIT, has created a &#8220;low-power ultrawide-band radio&#8221; and &#8220;a digital baseband processor.&#8221; Both are tiny and light enough to be attached to a cybernetic moth. The group has also developed a &#8220;piezoelectric energy-harvesting system that scavenges power from vibrations&#8221; as a moth beats its wings. The system may be able to supply the power required by the camera and transmitter.<\/p>\n<p>Now, where the hell did I stick that can of Raid?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elsewhere on the robotics front, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is making good progress towards its goal of turning insects into remote-controlled surveillance and monitoring instruments. Three years ago, Darpa launched its Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) project, with the intent, as described by IEEE Spectrum, of creating &#8220;moths or other insects [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}