Remote control animal
Three electrodes are implanted; two in the ventral posterolateral nucleus of the thalamus which conveys facial sensory information from the left and right whiskers, and a third in the medial forebrain bundle which is involved in the reward process of the rat.
This third electrode is used to give a rewarding electrical stimulus to the brain when the rat makes the correct move to the left or right.
During training, the operator stimulates the left or right electrode of the rat making it "feel" a touch to the corresponding set of whiskers, as though it had come in contact with an obstacle.
The rats could be instructed to turn left or right, climb trees and ladders, navigate piles of rubble, and jump from different heights.
All components in the system are commercially available and are fabricated from surface mount devices to reduce the size (25 x 15 x 2 mm) and weight (10 g with battery).
Even one of the pioneers in this area of study, Sanjiv Talwar, said "There's going to have to be a wide debate to see whether this is acceptable or not" and "There are some ethical issues here which I can't deny.
Talwar stated that the animal's "native intelligence" can stop it from performing some directives but with enough stimulation, this hesitation can sometimes be overcome, but occasionally cannot.
A command module which contains a microprocessor, wireless radio, GPS receiver and an attitude and heading reference system (essentially a gyroscope) can be fitted to dogs.
[10] Researchers responsible for developing remote control of a pigeon using brain implants conducted a similar successful experiment on mice in 2005.
[19] The US-based company Backyard Brains released the "RoboRoach", a remote controlled cockroach kit that they refer to as "The world's first commercially available cyborg".
The RoboRoach was the first kit available to the general public for the remote control of an animal and was funded by the United States' National Institute of Mental Health as a device to serve as a teaching aid to promote an interest in neuroscience.
They could be used e.g. for purposes of inspecting hazardous areas or quickly finding humans underneath hard-to-access rubbles at disaster sites.
[27][6] In 2009, remote control of the flight movements of the Cotinus texana and the much larger Mecynorrhina torquata beetles has been achieved during experiments funded by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
In 2015, researchers was able to fine tune the beetle steering in flight by changing the pulse train applied on the wing-folding muscle.
[28][32] It has been suggested the beetles could be used for search and rescue mission, however, it has been noted that currently available batteries, solar cells and piezoelectrics that harvest energy from movement cannot provide enough power to run the electrodes and radio transmitters for very long.
Although this frequency is lower than that observed with direct electrical stimulation of the giant fibre system, it is higher than that elicited by natural stimuli, such as a light-off stimulus.
When an electric current is passed through the wire, it stimulates the shark's sense of smell and the animal turns, just as it would move toward blood in the ocean.
[34] It has been suggested that such sharks could search hostile waters with sensors that detect explosives, or cameras that record intelligence photographs.
Outside the military, similar sensors could detect oil spills or gather data on the behaviour of sharks in their natural habitat.
The research has prompted protests from bloggers who allude to remote controlled humans or horror films featuring maniacal cyborg sharks on a feeding frenzy.
[10] South Korean researchers have remotely controlled the movements of a turtle using a completely non-invasive steering system.
Red-eared terrapins (Trachemys scripta elegans) were made to follow a specific path by manipulating the turtles' natural obstacle avoidance behaviour.
[35] In 2007, researchers at east China's Shandong University of Science and Technology implanted micro electrodes in the brain of a pigeon so they could remotely control it to fly right or left, or up or down.
[7] Other suggested fields of application include pest control, the mapping of underground areas, and the study of animal behaviour.
In 2007, it was reported that scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation had developed a prototype "invisible fence" using the Global Positioning System (GPS) in a project nicknamed Bovines Without Borders.
The first is visual (white plastic flags spaced at intervals around the perimeter in the fenced-in area), the second is audible (the collar emits a sound when the animal wearing it approaches buried cable), and finally there's an electric shock to indicate they have reached the fence.
