A Brief History of Cyborg Insects

And Spiders

For decades, insects—both morphology and intelligence—have influenced robot design.

In the 1980s and 90s, Rodney Brooks and his students at MIT made various reactive robots with behaviors and bodies inspired by insects.¹ “Bugs of the sea,” e.g. lobsters, have also inspired biomimetic robots at Northeastern University.² And researchers at Harvard worked on a RoboBee, an insect-sized vehicle that flies by flapping its wings.³

In some cases, researchers have opted to not just mimic biology but actually steal it by combining a living part of an insect with electro-mechanical parts.

Basically, little cyborgs. Because bugs aren’t scary enough.

Personally, the only time I’ve experienced an overlap of robotics with insects was when I worked on an autonomous underwater vehicle in a basement lab at MIT in which daring cockroaches would emerge from a drain panel in the floor every night…

Now why would researchers bother with cyborg bugs instead of going straight for mammals, even humans? Well there are some special capabilities and features of bugs:

For one thing, they move with a method of locomotion that’s as advanced as most mammals. The counterparts in the control systems between arthropods and mammals is extraordinary. Also, insects have open circulatory systems, and they recover quickly after surgery. Their movement and navigational capabilities make them first-rate cyborgs.⁴

And, importantly:

this field seems to have a lower ethical threshold in what can be done.⁵

Let’s take a stroll through the history of cyborg insects and spiders. I’m not saying “cybernetic” because that word has a more technical definition which does not necessarily apply to all of these projects.

1940s

Experiments showed that a moth pupa could be cut in half, rejoined with an implanted glass tube, and then grow into a normal adult moth. I don’t know if they realized it in the 1940s, but this showed potential for control via the embedded object.⁶

1999

Alper Bozkurt joins search and rescue efforts after an earthquake in Turkey where ~20k people died. This will later inspire Bozkurt to develop cyborg cockroach tech for potential search and rescue missions.⁷

2006

HI-MEMS

DARPA, our favorite crazy-research-ostensibly-for-defense organization, launched the project HI-MEMS—Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems.

This applied research was primarily for the goal of surveillance. “The project was created with the ultimate goal of delivering an insect within 5 meters of a target located 100 meters away from its starting point.”⁸

Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) Concepts

Here’s a couple of slides by Jim McMichael of Georgia Tech Research Institute presented in 2006 to the DARPA Airplane on a Chip Workshop⁹:

2007

Microprobes

Cornell researchers reported that microprobes inserted in the early pupae stage of moths are accepted by their bodies as they grow. Microsystems based on these microprobes were placed for muscle actuation and they also implanted a glass capillary “anchor.”¹⁰

2008

Cyborg June Beetles

Stephen Friedt, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hirotaka Sato, Michel M. Maharbiz et al from University of Michigan, University of California Berkeley and Arizona State University, created a tiny implantable flight control system. The system had various neural stimulators and a visual stimulator which were inserted into the “insect platform”—a Green June Beetle. They made use of the insect’s metamorphosis by implanting the electrodes at the pupa stage. The rest of the system was connected to the electrodes and mounted on top of the adult beetle. The goal was to advance research in MAVs (micro air vehicles).¹¹

Eventually we switched to the Texas Green June beetle, Cotinis texana…we looked for a beetle that flies, and Cotinis is a well-known flier—as well as a pest to fruit farmers. In fact, for a couple of years we collected thousands of these from farmers who could not believe we were paying them five dollars per beetle to get rid of their pests.¹²

Cyborg Moths

Researchers at Cornell again reported success in implanting probes at the pupae stage where the tissue naturally grows around the artificial implants so by adult stage they’re ready for interfacing with human electronic controls. They also reported partial flight control of moths (Manduca sexta).¹³

2009

Bioelectric Interface

Another report came out from Cornell in 2009 about developing a technique to embed electronic microprobes into the pupae stages—by the adult stage, the probe is nicely embedded in the flesh. They reported the adult insects did not react badly to these bioelectric interfaces as they did if you tried to insert them directly into adults. They also claimed that “The simplicity of the optimized surgical procedure we invented allows for batch insertions to the insect for automatic and mass production of such hybrid insect-machine platforms.”¹⁴

Cyborg Beetles 2.0

Sato et al return, this time with a giant flower beetle as the insect platform. And, this time it can be radio controlled in free-flight!¹⁵

There’s a YouTube video by Beetlecast on some of this research: When the US Military Made Cyborg Beetles.

Balloon Biobots

Not to be outdone by U. of Michigan, the mad lads at Cornell created radio-controlled insect “biobots.” Again using moths, and again by inserting their probe tech during early metamorphosis, these biobots could be flown using a radio controlled system with a conventional model airplane controller. To increase how much the biobots could carry, they attached helium balloons. I’m not sure if that was because the control + radio tech was too heavy or not.¹⁶

2012

Cyborg Eyes

I’ve already mentioned inserting interfaces during metamorphosis several times in this article already. A team at University of California Berkeley reported using this technique to implant neural interfaces, and were able to record sensory data from adults—both from eyes and antennae.¹⁷

Microfluidic + Electrical Interfaces

According to researchers at Cornell¹⁸:

Insect micro air vehicles represent a promising alternative to traditional small scale aircraft because they combine the enhanced energy storage and maneuverability of living insects with the controllability offered by microelectromechanical systems.

What’s new here is the combination of electrical probes with chemical microfluidics into a hybrid microsystem. This allowed them to control the flight of moths with the electrical component at the same time as controlling flight power via neurotransmitter doses to the central nervous systems.

2013

Brain / Muscle Hybrid

Another hybrid system came from Nanyang Technological University and University of California, Berkeley. In this project, neural stimulus of the insect was used to control flight start/stop and elevation. Turns, on the other hand, were controlled via direct muscle stimulation.¹⁹

Kinect

Researchers at North Carolina State University demonstrated a feedback control system in which a Kinect (a motion sensing device originally developed for the Xbox video game consoles) observes a cockroach biobot, and that position data is radio transmitted to the implant on the cockroach and used to update movement commands.²⁰

2014

Biofuel Cells

Case Western Reserve University demonstrated a new wireless communication system on a cockroach. What’s really amazing about this project is that it involves a biofuel cell—this cell converts chemical energy in the cockroach into electricity to power the wireless transmitter. However, the transmitter was acutally auditory not something like wi-fi. They also installed this on a moth, but it was too heavy for the moth to fly with it. ²¹

2015

Roaches, Again

Wired released a video story on Dr. Alper Bozkurt of North Carolina State University, mentioned previously on the Kinect project and under the 1999 heading. The video describes the electrodes in the roach as well as the tiny backback connected to those electrodes, which consists of a microcontroller (a tiny computer), radio, microphones (to triangulate sound) and a battery. And how it could be used to create swarms for rescue operations.

2020

Nano-tattoos

That’s right. Tattoos. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis reported a non-invasive biobot interface approach—plasmonic nanostructures. These nanostructures are applied with silk “nano-tattoos,” which act as interfaces between the nanostructures and the insect tissue. They were able to remote control nano-tattooed locusts using light and also detect TNT (explosive) molecules.²²

2022

Necrobotics

Necro? As in dead? That’s right! It’s a dead spider. Spiders are not insects but we’ll include it anyway. “Rice University mechanical engineers are showing how to repurpose deceased spiders as mechanical grippers.” Weird but interesting. The entire spider becomes a hand, basically, with its legs now becoming the fingers, kind of reminiscent of those big Transformers (of the popular cartoon and movie series) that are made up of smaller Transformers which become its limbs etc.

The necrobotic gripper is capable of grasping objects with irregular geometries and up to 130% of its own mass. Furthermore…innately camouflages in outdoor environments.²³

2023

A lot of locusts this year…

Bio-Hybrid Sensor

First up we have a bio-hybrid sensor, which could be developed into a detector device but I bet it could also be put onto robot platforms. Tel Aviv University researchers combined Desert Locust antennae with electroantennogram tech and ML based signal analysis to create an odor discriminator:²⁴

With four orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, it is able to detect the presence of less than 1 ng of volatile compounds

Microjumper

Second, we have a “locust-computer hybrid robot.” Chinese researchers used the Oriental Migratory Locust as a microjumping platform. They implemented a tiny backpack that allows remote control of the locust.²⁵

Postscript

If you know of any other insect or arachnid cyborg projects, especially if before 2006, please let me know and I’ll update this article accordingly.

1
R. A. Brooks, “A Robot that Walks; Emergent Behaviors from a Carefully Evolved Network,” in Neural Computation, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 253-262, June 1989, doi: 10.1162/neco.1989.1.2.253.
2
Ayers Joseph and Witting (2007). Biomimetic approaches to the control of underwater walking machines. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.365273–295 doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2006.1910
3
Jafferis, N.T., Helbling, E.F., Karpelson, M. et al. Untethered flight of an insect-sized flapping-wing microscale aerial vehicle. Nature 570, 491–495 (2019). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1322-0
4
Len Calderone (2018), The World of Insect Cyborgs, Robotics Tomorrow. roboticstomorrow.com/article/2018/06/the-world-of-insect-cyborgs/12087
5
H. Siljak, P. H. J. Nardelli and R. C. Moioli, “Cyborg Insects: Bug or a Feature?,” in IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 49398-49411, 2022, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3172980.
6
Amit Lal (2007), Microsystems, Scaling, and Integration. Microsystems Technology Symposium San Jose, CA, March 6, 2007. Obtained via: Insect Cyborgs & HI-MEMS/MAVS/NAVS. secrecy {fragments}. https://bkofsecrets.blog/2016/10/23/insect-cyborgs-insect-based-mavsnavs/
7
Jonathan Yaniv & Jacob Sillman, Cyborg Cockroaches Could Save Your Life | Cyborg Nation. Wired. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGf0UXq9V3s
8
Wikipedia contributors. (2022, February 16). Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:05, June 29, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hybrid_Insect_Micro-Electro-Mechanical_Systems&oldid=1072234666
9
Jim McMichael (2006), Micro Air Vehicles – Special Challenges. DARPA Airplane on a Chip Workshop, Arlington, VA, 6/20/06. Obtained via: Insect Cyborgs & HI-MEMS/MAVS/NAVS. secrecy {fragments}. https://bkofsecrets.blog/2016/10/23/insect-cyborgs-insect-based-mavsnavs/
10
Bozkurt, A., Paul, A., Pulla, S., Ramkumar, A., Blossey, B., Ewer, J., Gilmour, R.F., & Lal, A. (2007). Microprobe microsystem platform inserted during early metamorphosis to actuate insect flight muscle. 2007 IEEE 20th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), 405-408.
11
Sato, H., Berry, C.W., Casey, B., Lavella, G., Yao, Y., VandenBrooks, J.M., & Maharbiz, M.M. (2008). A cyborg beetle: Insect flight control through an implantable, tetherless microsystem. 2008 IEEE 21st International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 164-167.
12
Michel M. Maharbiz, Hirotaka Sato (2010), Cyborg Beetles: Merging of Machine and Insect to Create Flying Robots. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cyborg-beetles/
13
Lal, A., & Ramkumar, A. (2008). MEMS-Based Muscle Interfaces for Insect Cyborg Control.
14
Bozkurt A, Gilmour RF Jr, Sinha A, Stern D, Lal A. Insect-machine interface based neurocybernetics. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2009 Jun;56(6):1727-33. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2009.2015460. Epub 2009 Mar 4. PMID: 19272983.
15
Sato, H., Peeri, Y., Baghoomian, E., Berry, C.W., & Maharbiz, M.M. (2009). Radio-Controlled Cyborg Beetles: A Radio-Frequency System for Insect Neural Flight Control. 2009 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 216-219.
16
Bozkurt, A., Gilmour, R.F., & Lal, A. (2009). Balloon-Assisted Flight of Radio-Controlled Insect Biobots. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 56, 2304-2307.
17
A. D. Jadhav, I. Aimo, D. Cohen, P. Ledochowitsch and M. M. Maharbiz, “Cyborg eyes: Microfabricated neural interfaces implanted during the development of insect sensory organs produce stable neurorecordings in the adult,” 2012 IEEE 25th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), Paris, France, 2012, pp. 937-940, doi: 10.1109/MEMSYS.2012.6170340.
18
Chung, A.J., Cordovez, B., Jasuja, N., Lee, D.J., Huang, X.T., & Erickson, D. (2012). Implantable microfluidic and electronic systems for insect flight manipulation. Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, 13, 345 – 352.
19
Thang, V.D., Kolev, S., Anh, H.N., Chao, Z., Massey, T.L., Abbeel, P., Maharbiz, M.M., & Sato, H. (2013). Cyborg Insect : Insect Machine Hybrid System for Locomotion Control. International Conference on Innovations in Engineering and Technology (ICIET’2013) Dec. 25-26, 2013 Bangkok (Thailand).
20
Whitmire, E., Latif, T., & Bozkurt, A. (2013). Kinect-based system for automated control of terrestrial insect biobots. 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 1470-1473.
21
Schwefel, J., Ritzmann, R.E., Lee, I., Pollack, A.J., Weeman, W., Garverick, S.L., Willis, M.A., Rasmussen, M.A., & Scherson, D. (2014). Wireless Communication by an Autonomous Self-Powered Cyborg Insect. Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 161.
22
Tadepalli, S., Cao, S., Saha, D., Liu, K., Chen, A.B., Bae, S.H., Raman, B., & Singamaneni, S. (2020). Remote-controlled insect navigation using plasmonic nanotattoos. bioRxiv.
23
Yap, T. F., Liu, Z., Rajappan, A., Shimokusu, T. J., Preston, D. J., Necrobotics: Biotic Materials as Ready-to-Use Actuators. Adv. Sci.2022, 9, 2201174. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202201174
24
Shvil Neta, Golan Ariel, Yovel Yossi, Ayali Amir, Maoz M. Ben, The Locust antenna as an odor discriminator, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Volume 221, 2023, 114919, doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2022.114919.
25
Peng Liu, Songsong Ma, Shen Liu, Yao Li, and Bing Li. Omnidirectional Jump Control of a Locust-Computer Hybrid Robot. Soft Robotics. Feb 2023. 40-51. http://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2021.0137