Rat-Brained Robots and Landmine-Detecting Spinach: 5 Weird Hybrids of Biology and Technology
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The idea of creating biomechanical life forms or controlling machinery with thought alone seems pretty far-fetched... but the technology exists today. Here we look at some of the strange entities created when biology meets technology, including...
Mind-Machine Interfaces
Landmine-Detecting Spinach
Rat-Brained Robots
Self-Feeding Machines
Remote-Controlled Rats
EEG caps see a fair bit of use in psychology already... (ulrichw)
1. Mind-Machine Interfaces
Featuring in sci-fi properties such as Star Trek and Warhammer 40K, mind-controlled computers have a huge range of potential applications. They could be used as a way to pilot drones, or even as a workaround for paralysis - and even better, the technology already exists.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have produced a robotic arm controlled by a modified monkey. The animal was able to move a manipulator to grasp a target, receiving a sweet drink as a reward. The restrained primate was able to control the arm thanks to two brain implants located in the hand and arm locations of the motor cortex. Signals picked up by these implants were relayed to the robotic arm, which moved in accordance with the brain activity.
Whilst much less invasive, the BBC partnered with tech company This Place to create a mind-reading headset - designed so that a viewer could control the I-Player app through thought alone. The headset reads brainwaves and acts like a TV remote based on their input.
2. Landmine-Detecting Spinach
Spinach is often touted as a health food (one need only look at cartoons such as Popeye to see that) but nanobionic engineers at MIT have made a few... exotic modifications to the plant. By introducing fluorescent carbon nanotubes into the leaves, living plants were turned into sensors capable of detecting chemical traces from landmines.
The detection system makes use of the natural life processes of spinach. Like most plants, spinach gathers water via a root system - and since the chemicals contained by landmines slowly leech into the groundwater, the plant gathers them up as well. These traces bind to the carbon nanotubes, changing their fluoresce - something that can be detected with an infrared camera hooked up to a Pi device or a modified smartphone.
The carbon nanotubes used in these sensors can also be tailored to other substances such as TNT, bleach and sarin - meaning that they could be grown as a simple and unobtrusive chemical monitoring system.
Warwick and his team produced a rudimentary brain by growing embryonic rat neurons around an electrode array. Brain tissue begins forming links when different neurons activate at the same time, effectively bridging the gap between those neurons and causing them to activate in response to each other. For example, if you usually eat dinner at 6 p.m., you will automatically start thinking about food around that time.
The team was able to exploit this by manually activating pairs of electrodes together and "training" the brain to respond. After being given control of a small wheeled robot and having one of the electrodes connected to a sonar device, the miniature biomechanical horror would activate another electrode that turned the wheels when detecting an obstacle.
4. Self-Feeding MachinesOne of the potential problems with using robots on the battlefield is the necessity of fueling them. Human soldiers can adapt, foraging or hunting for food if rations get low - but machines tend to have a very narrow range of things they can use as fuel.
The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (also known as "EATR") attempts to circumvent this problem by allowing a machine to collect combustible items from the environment. Conceptualized in 2003 and funded by the US military, the robot uses a steam engine powered by burning organic materials scavenged by machine - although it can also be powered by conventional fuels as well. The creators envisage it as a mobile gun turret or perhaps a battlefield ambulance!
The real concern here is whether the machine could decide to harvest human corpses for fuel. The designers claim that it mounts sensors capable of identifying and excluding flesh from potential fuels, and the desecration of battlefield corpses would break the Geneva Convention - but machines do have a habit of behaving unpredictably outside the lab!
5. Remote-Controlled Rats
Remote-controlled robots have a lot of downsides - for all their fearlessness, disposability and ability to follow orders without question, they remain clunky and inaccurate. To solve this problem, scientists in the USA have adapted living rats into remote-controlled organic robots.
A pair of electrodes were implanted in the areas of the brain that detect pressure on the whiskers, normally used to navigate by detecting narrowing walls or objects. Another electrode was situated in the pleasure center of the rats brain, allowing researchers to induce pleasure as a reward.
By triggering the left or right whiskers, the researchers were able to guide the path taken by the rat - and reinforce the behavior with a jolt of pleasure. The rats were able to be guided in this fashion for up to an hour, and were able to negotiate ladders, ledges, trees and rubble. If outfitted with a camera harness these remote controlled rats could make an excellent reconnaissance tool in disasters, able to negotiate terrain a human or robot could not - or they could be fitted with a weapon and used as a tool of assassination!
Thanks for reading - for more strange science, try...
