Cyborg Moths to Hunt Terrorists

The Times Online has a look at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's efforts to create cyborg moths to spy on terrorists.

Darpa's been looking for years at biological engineering, including building machines that act like animals and insects and using animals and insects in surveillance systems. The cyborg effort is part of Darpa's Hybrid Insect Microelectromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program and involves injecting computer chips into cocoons. The flesh then grows around the chip, enabling warfighters to control the moth's nervous system remotely. Darpa says because the flesh grows after the chip has been implanted, the tissue heals, creating a "reliable tissue-machine interface." The moths could be flown over suspected terrorists camps to get video and data, presumably without arousing much suspicion.

Rod Brooks, director of the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the newspaper that he expects the cyborg moths to be deployable soon.

“This is going to happen," said Mr Brooks. "It’s not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply.”

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth