You might want to rethink that Roach Motel.
The sight of cockroaches scurrying across the floor – and just about anywhere else – may give katsaridaphobiacs a fit but the famously hardy creepy crawlers may one day help save people in a disaster, CNET reports.
Researchers at North Carolina State University have turned common cockroaches into cyborg “biobots” – bionic rescuers that can find people trapped in rubble by using microphones.
“The goal is to use the biobots with high-resolution microphones to differentiate between sounds that matter – like people calling for help – from sounds that don’t matter, like a leaking pipe,” said Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor at the university.
The tiny creatures can also be remotely controlled through small circuit boards attached to their nervous systems.
Special software can analyze data from the roaches and steer them toward detected sounds and even to light sources to allow solar cells on their backpacks to recharge the microelectronics.
The biobots also can be kept from leaving the disaster sites through the use of an “invisible fence.”
Edgar Lobaton, an assistant professor of computer and electrical engineering at the university, says that the biobots also can map a disaster site.