The GHZ Forum

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19726461.800-the-cyborg-animal-spies-hatching-in-the-lab.html wrote: Meet the robo-bug

An odd-looking three-wheeled robot pivots on the spot, seemingly with a purpose, but there's no human directing it. Instead, it is under the control of a rather large moth.

This curious creation is the brainchild of Charles Higgins and his team at the University of Arizona in Tucson. They have found a way to intercept signals from the moth's visual system to guide the robot. They connected an electrode to a single, micrometre-wide nerve fibre on one side of the moth's brain, tapping into the electrical pulses it normally uses to keep itself flying straight.

The moth is held horizontally inside the robot and surrounded by a vertical cylinder with vertical lines drawn on the inside. When the cylinder is rotated, the moving lines trick the moth into thinking it is turning left or right. This triggers a response in the moth's brain, which the system detects and translates into motion in the robot. The team presented their results late last year at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, California.

Higgins sees such hybrid machines as the next step in the evolution of robotic systems. "This is where I see computing going. We'll have some living components and some non-living components. They'll all be mixed together in the way that works best."

G.Silver wrote:More of Bigdog. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc