DARPA seeks help designing combat robot insect hordes

By at 10:48 am Wednesday, Mar 15

Snip from proposal request on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency website:
DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power.
Link. (Thanks, mantid) 
Image: sheesh, I guess for some global superpowers, Insectobots toys just aren't good enough.

Xeni Jardin

Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net.

Comments are closed.

Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.