Roachbot

Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot (2006) – Garnet Hertz – High Resolution Video Overview from Garnet Hertz on Vimeo.

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Is that good? I don’t know… is it? I think it might be the opposite of good? But who knows? It’s 4 years ago. Nothing bad happened did it?

It reminds me of those things off Dune – giant megalomaniacal warbots with human brains – essentially immortal, but not entirely mechanical.

This cockroach thing is basically taking a genius piece of engineering, that we’re probably not going to manage in our life-times – aka: a cocroach, and using it to power a clunky naff-bot. It’s like using an iPhone as a paperweight… but a much bigger paperweight.

Or maybe that’s the wrong way of looking at it – maybe the robot is an extension of the bug’s exoskeleton… I have sortof said it before I think… I think this is the way robotics is going to wind up – not with bug controlled machines, but machine controlled bugs. We can easily (for our intents and purposes) replicate the basic functioning of a cockroach’s software…. the hardware on the other hand… yer dreaming.