Add their names to the honor rolls of mad science: Charles Higgins, a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona, and Timothy Melano, a grad student, have created a robot that's controlled by the brain of a moth.

A living hawk moth, held captive in a plastic tube, is connected to the bot via tiny wires implanted in its brain. The vehicle turns in the direction that the moth's eyes are looking. Yes, that's all (for now), but the implications for city-destroying cyberinsects are staggering.

Robo-moth cares not for your "three laws!"
(Credit: Timothy Melano, University of Arizona.)

Why would a pair of previously respectable scientists perform such a strange experiment? Partially for the pure science of it. At its website, the Neuromorphic Vision and Robotic Systems Lab notes, "The field of neuroscience is moving toward understanding how sensory systems compute under closed-loop control. It is important to step away from open-loop experiments, i.e. where an animal cannot interact with its sensory inputs, because in the real world sensory neurons are passengers on a moving body whose sensory inputs are intimately related to its behavior. ... [W]e have designed a robotic electrophysiology instrument whose velocity is determined by bioelectrical signals from an animal. ... This robotic instrument allows us to perform electrophysiological experiments while a moth is onboard and controlling the robot, which, in engineering terms, closes the loop."

But like so many, these two were also motivated by money. A hawk moth costs four bucks, but its receptors are far more sensitive than hugely expensive state-of-the-art artifical sensors. The Lab's site states, "With this instrument we will characterize visual motion detection neurons and investigate the use of these neurons as biosensors for robots."

Can a mechanized bug-brained army be far behind? Smart money says no!