To be honest, i´m not sure about the Ethical matter on this project… at a first glance seems pretty cool to control another live being with a microprocessor, but… after thinking about it… it´s kind of kreppy?
Anyway, no matter the ethical point of view or the personal opinions, it´s quite an amazing project and is worth to take a look.
Would be interesting to make a swarm army with the cockroaches? or a new toy for the cat? who knows??
In their own words:
(Extracted from Backyardbrains.com)
Have you ever wanted to walk down the hall of your school or department with your own remote controlled cockroach? After 3 long years of R&D, the RoboRoach is now ready for it’s grand release! We are excited to announce the world’s first commercially available cyborg! With our RoboRoach you can briefly wirelessly control the left/right movement of a cockroach by microstimulation of the antenna nerves. The RoboRoach is a great way to learn about neurotechnology, learning, and electronics!
We are currently running a kickstarter campaign to fund the release of our new RoboRoach! This will fund the next 2-3 PCB revisions (we need to get a handle on power management, and digital gain control) as well as our lesson plans and software development for the Android (when it supports BLE).
Back Our Project on Kickstarter!
Product Details
The RoboRoach “backpack” weighs 4.4 grams with the battery, and each battery will last over a month! Following a brief surgery you perform on the cockroach to attach the silver electrodes to the antenna, you can attach the backpack to the roach and control its movement for a few minutes before the cockroach adapts. When you return the cockroach to it’s cage for ~20 minutes, he “forgets” and the stimulation works again. Once you receive your RoboRoach in the mail, follow our online surgery instructions and videos and you will soon be on your way to becoming an expert in neural interfaces. After about 2-7 days, the stimulation stops working altogether, so you can clip the wires and retire the cockroach to your breeder colony to spend the rest of its days making more cockroaches for you and eating your lettuce.
Technical Specs
- 1x Free iOS application for remote control
- 1x Bluetooth Roboroach backpack control unit
- 1x 1632 RoboRoach Battery
- 3x Electrode Sets (to implant 3 Roaches)
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