First untethered controlled flight by a cyborg beetle

Cyborg beetles are insect-robot hybrids created by implanting electrical probes in the muscles of living bugs. These probes are attached to a small microcontroller, mounted on the insect's back, which can be remotely operated by experimenters. In 2008, a team from Cornell University (USA) led by Dr Alper Bozkurt (USA/Turkey) successfully flew a Carolina Sphinx moth (Manduca sexta) that they had fitted with electronic controls. This bug was tethered during its flights, however, and control of its flight was imprecise and short-lived. The first true free flight by a robotic insect (with no tether) wasn't achieved until the following year, when a team led by Hirotaka Sato (Japan) of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, successfully flew a cyborg flower beetle (Mecynorrhina torquata) using a microcontroller and muscle stimulators that allowed control of flight speed, direction and altitude. The results of their studies were published in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience on 5 October 2009.

The first cyborg insects were created in the late 1990s. At first the electronic implants were able only to steer the beetles as they walked, as with a 1997 experiment that used simple light sensors to guide a beetle along a "track" of black ink. By 1998, researchers had achieved full remote control (start, stop, left and right) over flightless madagascan hissing cockroaches. The earliest simple experiments with aspects on insect flight took place in 2004.

These experiments are being conducted as a means to learn more about insect locomotion (which would be of considerable use in the field of microrobotics), but may also have practical applications. One possible application is in search and rescue, where a camera-carrying robot cockroach could be a valuable tool for searching for survivors in collapsed buildings.