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Insect Cyborgs

 

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Controlled by neurons, muscles are the micro-mechanical actuators of the body. Throughout history, humans have indirectly benefited from the muscle power of animals around them to build various civilizations. This was possible through the process of domestication, where domestication efforts have mainly involved selective breeding of the species that are trainable by humans. With the recent developments in microtechnology and neuroengineering, it may be possible to directly benefit from animal muscles through “biobotic” control of the neuromuscular system. Insects are especially promising candidates in this regard because of the relative simplicity of their locomotion control system. Tapping into the simplicity of this system, I have worked towards developing neuromuscular microsystems to tame and domesticate insect function. When instrumented with equipment to gather information for environmental sensing, such insects potentially can assist man to monitor the ecosystems that we share with them for sustainability.

 

To achieve this goal, we presented a novel surgical procedure at Cornell University to insert artificial implants into insects at early stages of metamorphosis (Figure 1).  In this Early Metamorphosis Insertion Technology (EMIT), the implants are integrated with (or fused into) the structure and function of the insect body as a result of metamorphic development. Implants inserted into the pupal cuticle emerge with the adult insect to form a hybrid insect-machine system. Using this procedure, I was able to alter and control the flight of tobacco hawkmoth Manduca sexta by actuating its flight muscles on tethered and untethered setups.

 

Figure 1: Summary of the EMIT procedure

 

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The EMIT procedure has opened an alternative window for neural-engineers to explore the details of insect flight neurodynamics and its control by allowing the implantation of various micro devices through a simple surgery with minimal or no resulting tissue damage. Following our initial demonstrations of this metamorphic surgery procedure at Cornell, other groups also used this method to implant systems to stimulate the abdomen of moths (MIT and University of Washington), as well as the brain and the wing muscles of beetles (University of Michigan and University of California, Berkeley). All these works were fully supported by DARPA HIMEMS program.

 

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