 Do you get a creepy feeling, a tingling on the back of your neck, when you think of a camera behind or above you illicitly watching your every move? Now, imagine if that camera has legs – and it’s crawling up your pants. Yes, good, old-fashioned German ingenuity has resulted in Kakerlaken – the humble cockroach – being transformed into a robust surveillance platform. These roaches, the actual insects, are fitted with tiny AI backpacks that use neural stimulators under wireless control to steer the little spies to their targets, while they carry miniature cameras and sensors on their tiny, slimy carapaces. In case you are wondering, German scientists at Swarm Biotactics are using the Madagascar hissing variety, one of nature’s largest, and surely among your all-time, favorite cockroaches. These cyborg-bugs will do more than provide real-time video reconnaissance. They will also detect toxic gas, radiation, and heat. And the technology’s neural interface can coordinate a large number of cyber-roaches to converge on a target as a swarm. Even better! These technologies, reports The Times of India, allow “remote control and autonomous swarming in tight or inaccessible environments.” Germany has invested more than $15 million to perfect this surveillance army, no doubt with Russia’s military threat in mind. Germany’s invention appears to be an advance over U.S. and Chinese military projects to develop tiny, mosquito-like drones to carry out surveillance. But those tiny robots are limited by range and battery life. A roach lives off the land and can scuttle for months to a year. They make the perfect sleeper agents and require no fake beards or forged passports. We can certainly see the military utility of this project. We also can’t help but note that exotic technologies developed for warfare have a way of migrating – or, perhaps in this case, scuttling – from military to civilian uses. It is inevitable perhaps that similar off-the-shelf AI and sensors will make their way into commercial and law enforcement uses. It’s bad enough when you see an ordinary Kakerlaken on the floor when you turn on the kitchen light. It would be even worse if someone recorded you shrieking before you smash it with your shoe. Comments are closed.
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