A technology allowing locusts to 'sniff out explosives'

Locusts have a similar sense of smell to humans in that they can identify a particular smell even when it is mixed in with other odours. Their "robotic noses" could be trained to pinpoint and recall a smell such as dangerous chemicals.
Scientists at Washington University are researching technology they hope will allow locusts to detect explosives using their sense of smell.
They say heat-generating "tattoos" will enable them to be guided into dangerous or remote areas via remote control. Neural signals from the locust's brain will then be processed by an on-board low-power processing chip that will decode the information and send a wireless alert back to the authorities.
And the result will appear on a simple LED: red for present, green for absent.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36702704

 

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Good, explosives have become a terrible threat lately.

I'm not quite sure about the ethics of cyborgifying animals though, to make them tools. But animals have been used as tools before this technology came up, so the only question is, how much does the animal suffer and where to draw the line.

 

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http://www.sciforums.com/threads/sc...ctronic-nose-the-next-everyday-device.156779/

Thanks.

 

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