The Incredible Shrinking Spy: Surveillance Scales to Miniature

The new generation of spies tend to be on the small side. Some of the new, advanced mobile "bugging" devices actually are bugs: insect cyborgs to be more precise.

SD

Professor Khalil Najafi, the chair of electrical and computer engineering, and doctoral student Erkan Aktakka are finding ways to harvest energy from insects, and take the utility of the miniature cyborgs to the next level.

"Through energy scavenging, we could potentially power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communications equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack," Najafi said. "We could then send these 'bugged' bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go." _SD

These tiny, stealthy spies can retrieve information from places you would never dream of sending one of your human agents. And the process of miniaturisation has just begun.

Image SourceAbove you see a type of wasp known as the "fairy fly." It is smaller than an amoeba, and roughly the size of a paramecium. Imagine such a mini-wasp outfitted with a full kit of spy equipment. Where could such a tiny spy not go?

Well, of course your cyborg insects would be vulnerable to insecticide. Which is one reason why you would want to pursue research into non-cyborg miniature spy machines. But evolution has a long head-start on artificial nano-machine makers. There is a great deal which we must learn before we are able to mimic living miniature machines in terms of functionality.

The new generation of miniature machine makers will have to learn from nature, rather than to attempt the enterprise from scratch. Even Eric Drexler has been forced to move away from his early "diamondoid architecture" in pursuit of more proven nano-machine materials.

As for the concept of nano-spies, expect it to take off. Literally. An upcoming 2012 space mission aims to launch 4 nano-satellites. And that is only the beginning.

Expect invisible spies to surround you wherever you go -- whether at sea, on land, in space, or underground. Some living, some pure machine, some half machine and half animal. It is a new era, in which it becomes more difficult to remain invisible.

Consider your counter-measures. And consider stocking up on insecticides and advanced insect repellants. Your privacy may depend upon it.

Rats Can be Trained as Soldiers Too

The rat brain is a highly effective survival tool. Rats can learn to navigate complex maizes, can be taught to respond to complex sequences of stimuli, and now can learn to target a robot arm with a high degree of precision. How much longer before rats can target projectile weapons and detonate command mines and booby traps?

Fitted with tiny electrodes in their brains to capture signals for the computer to unravel, three rats were taught to move a robotic arm toward a target with just their thoughts. Each time they succeeded, the rats were rewarded with a drop of water.

The computer's goal, on the other hand, was to earn as many points as possible, Sanchez said. The closer a rat moved the arm to the target, the more points the computer received, giving it incentive to determine which brain signals lead to the most rewards, making the process more efficient for the rat. The researchers conducted several tests with the rats, requiring them to hit targets that were farther and farther away. Despite this increasing difficulty, the rats completed the tasks more efficiently over time and did so at a significantly higher rate than if they had just aimed correctly by chance, Sanchez said.

"We think this dialogue with a goal is how we can make these systems evolve over time," Sanchez said. "We want these devices to grow with the user. (Also) we want users to be able to experience new scenarios and be able to control the device."

Dawn Taylor, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University, said the results of the study add a new dimension to brain-machine interface research. That UF researchers were able to train rats to use the robotic arm and then obtain significant results from animals lacking the mental prowess of primates or humans is also impressive, she said. _Source

This type of research is meant to develop into human research, of course, to help paralysed and disabled humans to learn to manipulate prosthetic arms and other aspects of their environment, mentally. Such goals are quite worthwhile and should be pursued. Sophisticated brain implants will learn to adapt to an individual's unique intra-brain communication signaling -- it will self-customise itself to fit each person whose brain it finds itself within.

But the rat brain is far more capable of precise, real time adaptive behaviour in the real world than any human-made computer of such small size. In combat, a brain implant equipped rat could create total mayhem within the ranks of an opposing military, given the proper weapons and munitions. Will such rodent warriors take the form of Cyborgs or Grobycs? It depends upon the approach of their developers. Either way, such four legged commandos could pack quite a wallop.

You WILL Be Assimilated

The first step toward the creation of "deep cyborgs" may have been created at Caltech recently. The brain-machine interface pictured below may not look like the bridge to borg-hood, but it doesn't have to impress you. It just needs to work.

This is the 'first robotic approach to establishing an interface between computers and the brain by positioning electrodes in neural tissue.' According to the researchers, their approach 'could enhance the performance and longevity of emerging neural prosthetics, which allow paralyzed people to operate computers and robots with their minds.'

...This research work has been conducted at the Caltech Robotics Burdick Group by a team of engineers led by Michael Wolf, Joel Burdick, his mentor, Jorge Cham and Edward Branchaud.

Here is how Wolf describes the project. "Our approach consists of implanting a small robotic device (and accompanying control algorithm) with many individually-motorized electrodes that each autonomously locate, isolate, and track a neuron for long periods of time. To further complicate matters, we wish to find signals only from neurons dedicated ('tuned') to a particular task, say controlling an 'arm reach.'

..."As the electrodes are driven into the tissue, the software starts taking sample recordings to detect spikes of electrical activity at the electrode tip. When the software detects spikes, it moves forward in small increments and tracks how the signals change. After determining whether the signal has improved or gotten worse, it the algorithm moves the electrode to a new position and does more recording and comparing, driving the electrode in further if necessary until it finds the best signal. If the signal wanes, the algorithm will automatically adjust the electrode position to improve the signal."

The researchers say that they've designed their neuron-tracking algorithm by looking at software used by the U.S. military to track planes. They also say that even if it hasn't been done before, their "robotic interface could increase the life span of neural prosthetics."

This research work will be presented tomorrow at the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2008) currently held in Pasadena, California (May 19-23, 2008) during a session focused on "Bio-Inspired and Biomedical Robotics" under the name "A Miniature Robot for Isolating and Tracking Neurons in Extracellular Cortical Recordings." __Primidi

Here is the abstract .
Link to IEEE Spectrum article
PDF document of earlier (2005) presentation of concept

As brain-machine interfaces become more sophisticated and capable of two-way interaction, the possibility of humans controlling machines has to be seen alongside the possibility of machines controlling humans.