The Pentagon funded a project at UC Berkeley where scientists implanted electrodes and tiny antennas into beetles, allowing researchers to remotely control the beetles' flight. By delivering electrical signals to a micro battery attached to the beetles, the scientists could command the insects to take off, hover, and turn. While fascinating from a scientific perspective, the project raises concerns about potential military applications like surveillance or chemical weapon delivery using remote-controlled cyborg beetles. However, current technology limitations around power sources and payload size mean the beetles have limited usefulness for those purposes.

2. The cyborg
beetle
Man has yet to master nature, but
now he can make it turn left. Armed
with funding from the Pentagon's
research wing, an engineering team at
the University of California, Berkeley,
has devised a method of remotely
controlling the flight of beetles.

3. By attaching radio
antennas and
embedding
electrodes in the
insects' optic
lobes, flight
muscles and
brains, professors
Michel Maharbiz
and Hirotaka Sato

4. can manipulate their subjects into
taking off, hovering in midair and
turning on command. The trick?
Wirelessly delivering jolts to a
micro battery fastened to a circuit
board atop the hapless
insects, whose agility and capacity
to tote valuable payloads could
make the tiny creatures the
ultimate fly on the wall.

5. The Pentagon has funded a project at UC
Berkley in which scientists have
successfully grafted electrodes and tiny
radio antennae to flying beetles--allowing
researchers to steer the beetles by remote
control. These cyborg beetles are both
fascinating and terrifying--the project is
helping scientists discover new insights
into how beetles fly.

6. But experts are also already discussing
the possibilities a remote-controlled
flying beetle can offer the military. So
how does one create a remote
controlled cyborg beetle, anyhow?
Well, evidently, electrodes are
implanted at the beetles' pupal stage
in order to outfit the beetles for
remote control later

8. Using Cyborg Beetles
for Good or Evil? And
here's where things start to
get a little unnerving--
discussing how the military
would be interested in taking
advantage of such
technology.

9. According to robotics professor Noel
Sharkey of UK's Sheffield University,
there's not too much that the Pentagon
could with the beetles right now . GPS
systems or other tracking devices are
too heavy and cumbersome to fit on
beetles' backs. But he notes that the
cyborg beetles could feasibly carry
chemical weapons and could be
effective assassins, though this would
be highly illegal.

11. Brain-Recording Backpacks?
It's a view echoed by Reid Harrison
,an electrical engineer at the
University of Utah, Salt Lake
City, who has designed brain-
recording backpacks for insects.
"I'm skeptical about their ability to
do surveillance for the following
reason: no one has solved the
power issue."

12. Batteries, solar cells and
piezoelectric that harvest energy
from movement cannot provide
enough power to run electrodes
and radio transmitters for very
long, Harrison says. "Maybe
we'll have some advances in
those technologies in the near
future, but based on what you
can get off the shelf now it's not
even close."

15. Naveen Tanwar
Amrit Singh
Abhishek Kaushik
Abhishek Jatrana