Draper's Dragonfly Has a Machine Controlled Brain
Cyborgs are now a real, check this out. A mind controlling backpack was strapped to a living dragonfly making it the world’s smallest drone. This year Charles Stark Draper Laboratory successfully blended machine control software with insect neurons in a project -unfortunately- called DragonflEye. And that’s not even the weird part.
According to Draper, the team has "develop(ed) tiny optical structures ... that can activate the special 'steering' neurons with pulses of light piped into the nerve cord from the dragonfly’s backpack.” This means that DragonFlEye’s controlling backpack can pinpoint exact nerves and force precise involuntary movements from the dragonfly. The impact? With traditional fiber optics being too crude to target nerves this specifically, Drapers new method means we’ve unwrapped a level of sophistication that will give machines the power to control the movements of living things. And that’s not even the weird part.
These machine controlled insects, can learn. Thousands of mirco-detectors allow the dragonfly is sense it’s surroundings, and store the information for further use. The ability to analyze and store data has it’s developers gearing for use in surveillance, and intelligence. The cyborgs capacity to blend with it’s surroundings makes it a stealthier alternative to any spy drone on the market. With DragonflEye opening a window of possibilities for bio-technology, we feel that there’s more to this story.
While the projects surveillance potential is clear, the path this will take us down remains foggy. With sophisticated neuron targeting, the potential this holds for next generation medical applications excites me the most. Imagine reactivating dead neurons for stroke victims, bringing life back to dead limbs, keeping hearts beating, and brain functions fluid in the future of this technology. While surveillance is cute, I have a lot more faith in the value of this technology meaning a lot more that keeping an eye on Russians via-cockroach. Only time will tell, but my predictions are as optimistic as this project is revolutionary.
