BLOG VIEW | HEADLINE VIEW

ALL

GEEK

Worst Thing Ever: Insect Robots

THURSDAY OCTOBER 11 2007 9:00 AM

Submitted by FearTheReaper. Edited By erin_broadley.

TAGS: Insect robots

I hate bugs and I hate robots. Now some asshole seems to have created insect robots. Why don�t they just blow up the planet? Robots are pure evil and in case anyone hasn�t noticed movies over the past few decades, they will eventually kill us all. It�s inevitable, especially when you make them small and give them wings. Unfortunately, protesters claim the winged bot demons are here.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

They are alive and mechanical. They are �robotic fliers� and they are going to kill you. The insect drones are high-tech surveillance tools that have been seen at political protests in Washington and New York. Although, no agency has claimed the robobugs.

No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.

Uh, what? After I finish this article, I�m going to blow my brains out. I figure it will be more pleasant than the coming insect robot revolution. I always pictured fighting for my life in storm drains, using my warning cats (I like cats) to alert me to intrusive robots. But those robots are supposed to be large and take the shape of humans. Sure, there would be the occasional spider shaped robot, crawling around with a video camera, but my cats would quickly destroy them. Flying insect robots obviously fuck up everything. Now a robot just flies into my storm drain, armed with its tiny stinger full of deadly poison. Or worse, a substance that only paralyzes my cats and me. Then the humanoid robots just saunter in, take me back to the lab and attempt to manpregnate me with cyborgs. Totally fucked up.

Some, however, do not believe that the tiny airborne robots exist.

The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet.

"If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.

Actually, you�ll know because one will have flown into your ear and taken control of you body. Idiot.

The CIA developed the �insectothopter� in the 70�s. It used a tiny gasoline engine, four wings and looked like a dragonfly. But it was taken out of commission because it couldn�t handle crosswinds. And that was the seventies! Of course they have tiny flying robots now.

Even more disturbing, we have created �cyborg insects.�

In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are inserting computer chips into moth pupae -- the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult -- and hatching them into healthy "cyborg moths."

Great. Just fucking great. We have cameras everywhere, constantly watching people, but I never thought I would have to be concerned about tiny flying cameras. This brings surveillance to an entirely different level. We here in America tend to value our privacy and I�m pretty sure the Founding Fathers never covered flying insect robots in The Constitution. I don�t think Thomas Jefferson ever looked at James Madison and said,

Welcome to the invasion of privacy insect robot era. It's not goint to be pretty. I�ve been violated too many times by regular bugs and understand how intrusive they can be. I give it 30 years before we are a slave race working for insect robots.

FearTheReaper does not welcome our new insectobot warlords.

43 Comments

PAGE:

1 | 2 | 3

SirPsychoSexy

Ridgewood, NJ

January 2004

OCT 11, 2007 01:04 PM

Heracleitus said:
You could develop robot spiders to eat the rogue robot insects and then robot birds to eat the rogue robot spiders and then robot cats to eat the rogue robot birds and then a robot dogs to eat the rogue robot cats and then a robot cow (someone ran out of good ideas somewhere along the line) to eat the rogue robot dogs...

... But the old lady is still going to die in the end.

Just build a robo-old lady.

Jace

Reno, NV

February 2004

OCT 11, 2007 01:19 PM

Yeah, this is pretty much the beginning of the end. The inevitable war against the robots might be winnable if they were big. Like, Terminator style robots. Then it might not be so bad, except we'd have silly metal bullets and they'd have lasers. But insects? Aren't like 99% of the world's animals insects? Yeah, it's all over. The entire planet would be blanketed in vampiric cyborg mosquitos with mind control viruses while we slept, and the next day the newspaper would stop coming out.

Game over, man. Game over.

Mantis

SUICIDEGIRL

North Carolina, USA

OCT 11, 2007 01:23 PM

I'm scared of the government and how it's going to control our lives even more in the future. Fucking Facists.

Munke

Chula Vista, CA

May 2004

OCT 11, 2007 01:27 PM

Once again, the Hollywood showed us what the future held.

I wonder though, who will the real life Genes Simmons be?
Dick Cheney perhaps? One can only hope.

SockPuppet

I'm lost

July 2006

OCT 11, 2007 04:22 PM

gnihk said:
dang.

Dan brown - facts 4th bullet up from the bottom.

I remember my high school spanish teacher making her classes buy his books and one of them they had these little " spy bugs" in. He supposedly uses actual factual things and technology in his novels. and in the one I read the little flying things had poison on them or something and were crazy super weapons.

The word you need to pay attention to is "supposedly".

joker_

Windsor, CA

October 2005

OCT 11, 2007 04:57 PM

Luddite

Anderson, CA

December 2005

OCT 11, 2007 05:08 PM

This is the only cyborg I will fear... and they might already be among us

10k

Baton Rouge, LA

July 2002

OCT 11, 2007 07:14 PM

Material science is amazing. I know that weight was the limiting factor for micro bots before, but not with some of the stuff they have now. Carbon fiber and aerogel and plenty strong and lighter than anything seen previously. Robotic insects not sounding so far fetched after all.

I for one welcome our new robo-bug overlords.

Azkadellia

Douglas, MI

April 2007

OCT 11, 2007 08:20 PM

huh. Looks like I'll finally get some use out of that spray that kills wasps, scorpions, and robotic insects. Well, glad that wasn't a total waste.

JunkyardAngel

San Gabriel, CA

February 2006

OCT 11, 2007 11:34 PM

Dude. Do you hate me? Why don't you want me to ever ever ever be able to sleep again?

Seriously.

When I read the title I thought - Okay. Insect bots, like those freaky litte critters in Minority Report, ha ha ha ha. . . - Ishould have stopped at the title and not read the article.

I need a drink.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

FellOnEarth

Temecula, CA

April 2006

OCT 11, 2007 11:37 PM

So, is one guilty of a federal offense if a flying micro surveillance device is swatted from the air (destruction of government property)? Or, if you capture one upon your property, can you sue the government for illegal trespass and for being spied upon if there is no just cause for them to do so? (Think about it for a minute, the government already has aircraft and helicopters that fly overhead every day, they are supposed to maintain a 500 ft berth except during take off and landing, but just where does this legal flight line "above" property air space begin and end for an object who's take off and landing points are mere feet or inches???) These devices present entirely new realm of legal issues, it boggles the mind to think of all the possibilities.

In this day and age, it seems that we need a revised and updated bill of rights. Among these rights should be a guarantee from having our actions and information, personal and private, from being monitored and marketed for financial gain without our express consent. Increasingly however, it seems that we must submit to overbearing contracts that force us to surrender our private lives to companies when we use their products and services, rarely are we given the option to opt out without terminating services altogether (think of a phone company for example). We simply have no choice in the matter other then to comply or completely do without. As the government is busy enacting legislation to shield the telecom industry from a long overdue and massive class-action lawsuit for their complicity in illegal monitoring of this county's citizens, we continue to lose our rights to remain anonymous, free and independent.

Happy 1984 everyone!

In the mean time, I'll have to keep one of these things handy:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Yuriel

I'm lost

January 2004

OCT 12, 2007 07:07 AM

I can't help but think:

Replicators.

All your base are belong to us.

We are Borg.

....
and

ZERG RUSH!
... our government has truly lost their marbles.

I mean we still can't get rid of mosquitos effectively without DDT (see previous articles from a few days back...)

And they're making them stronger and robotic for privacy invasion purposes? Geebus. Never mind corporate and black market possibilities.

Talk about bringing new meaning to needing new anti spyware programs.....

edited because I forgot my obviously most witty cliche.