Awesome!

A better robot, with help from a hissing roach

By John Schwartz
New York Times News Service
Published June 7, 2005

Garnet Hertz, a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine, has given a roach a car.

The idea, he says, is to take a novel approach to the problem of robotic navigation. In the past, robots haven't been particularly adroit; getting from Point A to Point B can be arduous, and navigation systems cumbersome and complex.

Hertz, a Fulbright scholar from Canada, was inspired by robotics pioneers such as Rodney Brooks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have suggested that robot intelligence should resemble that of roaches and other insects, which react quickly and instinctively to their environment.

Hertz said the project extends work in biological mimicry, but he adds: "It's a little bit of a joke. It's meant to say, `If all this bio-inspired stuff is so great, why don't you just use the biology and cut to the chase?"'

He uses the Madagascar hissing cockroach, which can grow as big as a mouse. In the summer of 2004, he built a three-wheeled cart, which rises about knee high. Atop the aluminum structure sits a modified computer trackball pointer, with a Ping Pong ball in place of the usual trackball.

The roach rides atop the trackball. As it scampers, the robot moves in the direction the roach would travel if it were on the ground; a Velcro patch and harness keep it in place.

Hertz also made use of the fact that roaches don't like light. In the device, the insect is enclosed by a semicircle of lights. Individual lights turn on when the device approaches nearby objects; in theory, the roach, in trying to avoid light, avoids the obstacles as well.

But biology is less predictable than technology.

Sometimes a roach appears perfectly happy to sit motionless on the ball for minutes at a time. Some roaches ignore the lights. And one of them, he believes, enjoys bumping the cart into walls.

Hertz orders his roaches online. In an unpublished essay, Hertz said he hopes the project would inspire "discussion about the biological versus computational, fears about technology and nature, a future filled with bio-hybrid robots, and a recollection of the narrative of the cyborg."

As opposed to simply, "Eeew."