Li Guangye, a postgraduate student at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), has made mind control a reality.
Using just his thoughts, he controlled the movement of the cyborg cockroach, a live cockroach fitted with electrodes and a chip, by wearing an electroencephalography (EEG) headset. He used his brain patterns to guide the cockroach to walk in an S-shaped bend and in a Zig-zag path.
It is not the first time that cockroaches wearing electronic ‘backpacks’ have been controlled by humans, but it is the first time they have been controlled directly by the human mind.
But how did Li achieve this incredible feat?
He implanted live microelectrodes to stimulate nerves in the cockroach’s antennae. These electrodes were linked to a remote control via a wireless network. Brainwaves, read by the EEG headset, were then transmitted to the controller. The headset decoded Li’s directional intention from eye movements and sent this to the electronic backpack receiver wired to the insect’s cerci – sensory organs. By electrically stimulating the cerci, the cockroach was prompted to move in a certain direction.
The project won the second place in the 2015 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s Student Activities Committee’s Video Contest and would be exhibited in the top-level meeting ICRA2015.
In the future, the cockroaches could be used for reconnaissance missions and the next step is to control an ‘army’ of cockroaches at once. Electrical engineers at North Carolina State University believe cyborg cockroaches could be used to survey areas and sent to disaster zones to seek out humans trapped under rubble.
