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Photography From The Future: Cockroach Cam

Sep 30, 2013 by Udi Tirosh 3 Comments

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We’ve seen our share of drone cameras, with cameras mounted on R/C Helicopters, R/C Quadcopters and R/C cars. But the need for a better, more capable drone drove Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at NC State university, to develop a remote controlled Cockroach.

Photography From The Future: Cockroach Cam

One of the main motivations for this development is to carry cameras into wracked sites where no man can go like earthquake sites or fallen buildings. Instead of developing a tiny robot capable of maneuvering in hard environments the NC team used a readily made creation of nature: ‘We decided to use biobotic cockroaches in place of robots, as designing robots at that scale is very challenging and cockroaches are experts at performing in such a hostile environment.‘

The mechanism works by irritating the bug’s antennas so it thinks it ran into an obstacle and tries to move around it. The device nagging the antennas is a small backpack which weighs less than a gram and contains the antenna controls and an R/C  receiver.

Photography From The Future: Cockroach Cam

The video below shows how the roach is controlled to follow a line drawn on the floor:

While this specific prototype is still not equipped with a camera, the line to get a 5th element cockroach cam has just gotten shorter. (If you recall, a similar device was conceived in the 5th element to spy on President Lindberg).

[Line Following Terrestrial Insect Biobots (pdf)]

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: biobotic, Cockroach Cam, Photography From The Future

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.net

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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