Moth Drives a Robotic Car in New Odor-Tracking Technology
A robotic car has been developed that can be driven by an insect pilot. As the silk moth responds to odors in the air, he walks along a trackball that translates its movements into two wheels to find the source of the odor.
Odor tracking is a necessary survival skill for insects. Understanding how to replicate it through artificial odor-tracking, or even being able to have insect-pilots controlling robotic platforms (like drones) has its advantages. Technology can be developed that is similar to drug sniffing dogs, applied to sniffing out disaster victims, explosives, or to sense leaking hazardous material. But this would require genetic modification for certain smells.
This new research was conducted by the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology of the University of Tokyo, and published December 19, 2016 in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE).
The new technique developed by researchers is a noninvasive way to engage in the sensory-motor relationship between a pilot insect and robotic technology. It also serves as an additional technique to understand adaptive behaviors and insects.
How it Works
Insect-controlled robot
(1) A tethered silkmoth on a treadmill (an air-supported ball, see inset), (2) two fans for supplying an odor to the moth (air speed, 0.5 m/sec), (3) suction tubes for taking the odor, (4) DC motors and wheels, (5) microcontroller boards, (6) an air intake for supplying air to the ball, (7) tracking markers for offline video analyses, (8) two LEDs to keep constant illumination in the cockpit (280 lx), (9) an attachment for tethering the silkmoth, and (10) a fixture of the attachment.
Adjustment of the position of a tethered moth on the treadmill.
The robotic driver, a male silkworm moth, is tethered in the cockpit with its legs freely movable over a ball supported by air pressure, similar to how an old mouse trackball would work except upside down.
Inside there is an airflow channel to support the elevation of the ball with a sensor in the back to detect the direction of movement the insect pilot is going towards. The canopy cover of the robotic car has a left and right odor sensing tube that blows the air in from the left and the right for the moth to detect. It's able to do so because there is a partition between the left and right fan that separates which direction the order is coming from.
Airflow designs for the treadmill and the odor delivery system
What did they use to attract the male silk moth to move? Easy! The female silkworm sex pheromones. Then the insect walks on the trackball driving robotic car, trying to find that female that isn't even there... poor guy!
The test went very well, with the insect controlling the robot doing nearly as well as 10 other silkworm moths that reached the smell by freely walking on the ground, lagging behind them by only 2 seconds.
Researchers say these findings can help robotisists build and integrate bio mimicked odor detection systems into robotics.
Check out the video, it's pretty cool!
References:
- Watch this moth drive a scent-controlled car
- Insect-controlled Robot: A Mobile Robot Platform to Evaluate the Odor-tracking Capability of an Insect
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@krnel
2017-01-04, 8pm
Oh nice. It's so interesting how we are finding applications with insects from our understanding of them.
What will science come up with next!
This seems like a long process, especially in comparison to this video recently that your post reminded me of remote-controlled live beetles
Nice. This post technology is about smell/odor though, the video above is different purpose, not for smell detection. Interesting. This tech in this post is also noninvasive.
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