Even insects can drive cars

POLICE release a swarm of robot-moths to sniff out a distant drug stash.

Rescue robot-bees burrow through earthquake rubble to find survivors.

These may sound like science-fiction scenarios, but they are the visions of Japanese scientists who hope to understand and then rebuild the brains of insects and programme them for specific tasks.

Professor Ryohei Kanzaki from Tokyo University's Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology has studied insect brains for three decades is a pioneer in the field of insect-machine hybrids.

His main goal is to understand human brains and restore connections damaged by diseases and accidents - but to get there he has taken a very close look at insects' 'micro-brains'.

The insect's tiny brains can control complex aerobatics such as catching another bug while flying, proof that they are 'an excellent bundle of software' finely honed by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, he said.

For example, male silkmoths can track down females from more than 1km away by sensing their odour, or pheromone.

Prof Kanzaki hopes to artificially recreate insect brains.

'It will be possible to re-create an insect brain with electronic circuits in the future. This would lead to controlling a real brain by modifying its circuits,' he said.

Prof Kanzaki's team has already made some progress on this front.

Such modifications could pave the way to creating a robo-bug which could in future sense illegal drugs several kilometres away, as well as landmines, people buried under rubble, or toxic gas, the professor said.

All this may appear very futuristic - but then so do the insect-robot hybrid machines the team has been working on since the 1990s.

Half-moth, half-machine

In one experiment, a live male moth was strapped onto what looks like a battery-driven toy car, its back glued securely to the frame while its legs move across a free-spinning ball.

Researchers motivate the insect to turn left or right by using female odour.

The team found that the moth can steer the car and quickly adapt to changes in the way the vehicle operates - for example by introducing a steering bias to the left or right similar to the effect of a flat tyre.

Prof Kanzaki said the insect-machine technology, though in its infancy, has real potential.

He said: '...We want to design a machine which is far more powerful than the living body.'