Roboroaches: Students Prepare to Control Roaches With Remote-Control Brains

[Jazzy]

Here's something a little more interesting than the same, tired frog-and-worm dissections for your high school science class: an electric backpack that you can jam into a cockroach brain to turn the bug into a kind of organic/cybernetic remote-controlled car.

That's the idea behind Roboroach, a product being developed by Backyard Brains, a company trying to find new and inexpensive ways to get practical neuroscience equipment into high school classrooms.



It hasn't put a final product in classrooms yet, but the company unveiled a working prototype to students at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich.



By looking at what electrical impulses can do in a cockroach brain, co-founder Greg Gage hopes he can show the next generation of neuroscientists what the brain is made of before they ever get to college.



The device takes advantage of a natural instinct in cockroaches: When one of their long antennae hit a wall, they naturally turn in that direction to run along the wall. The rig triggers those same neurons via remote control, allowing students to trick the roaches into making left and right turns.



[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04T5Zq6KPyY&feature=player_embedded[/media]

Full story: http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/15/roboroaches-students-prepare-to-control-roaches-with-remote-con/