Ephemera

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Ant Heads Controlling Giant Robots

Our house is yet again beset by ants. As I watched the ants patrolling my bathroom sink, it occurred to me that in the future it will be possible to build robots controlled by an ant brain's neuronal impulses. If one were to map the appropriate nerve ganglia responsible for bodily motion and mate these successfuly with the servo controllers on a robot, a disembodied ant head could conceivably operate a robot of massive proportions. The key would be a nutrient bath that would keep the ant-brain supplied with glucose and oxygen-- and of course a method for matching the input leads to the microscopic ganglia and their correspondingly small micro-voltages. On the web, I found a site by someone who has done something analogous with a giant hissing Madagascar cockroach. http://www.conceptlab.com/control/