A group of US researchers has developed a cyborg cockroach that can be sent into wreckages to search for survivors.
It’s a well known fact that Cockroaches are one of the world’s toughest creatures being able to survive for days without food or water and being able to live through much higher levels of radiation that it is humanly possible.
The new cockroaches have been fitted with a ‘backpack’ (pictured below) which is fitted with a small microphone and a wireless transmitter. This allows them to be sent into a destroyed building to locate trapped persons.
“In a collapsed building, sound is the best way to find survivors,” said Dr Alper Bozkurt, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, he continued “The goal is to use the biobots with high-resolution microphones to differentiate between sounds that matter—like people calling for help—from sounds that don’t matter—like a leaking pipe. Once we’ve identified sounds that matter, we can use the biobots equipped with microphone arrays to zero in on where those sounds are coming from.”
As well as the backpacks they have developed a method to ‘steer’ the cockroaches. This method has also been employed to create a ‘fence’ around a building, effectively stopping the cockroaches from leaving. In a real scenario, a fence would be set up around the building and the cockroaches released. From here they would be steered to the sounds of importance, such as people talking or calling for help.
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