In December, we reported on the latest in insect-inspired robots, the Insbot, a robo-roach designed to hang out with their organic brethren, trick them into thinking they’re the real deal, and even influencing their behavior. ScienceDaily has an update on the Insbots. Researchers have come a long way in their experiments, using roach pheromones on the bots to get the roaches to do such unroachly things as traveling towards and hanging out around a bright light source. You can lead a roach to a bug rapper, but you can’t [ZZZZZIIIIIIITTTTT]. Oh look, it turns that you can!
Besides being able to lead pesky crawlies to their doom, this sort of technology could be used to influence and maximize the actions of beneficial critters too. Kinda coo, kinda creepy at the same time.
Thanks, Jay!