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Killer robots.. reminds me of DUNE where that needle floats around looking to kill somebody.
Wasp searching for explosives? They are already being tested to find drugs...
"Wasp Miniature Camera
Teaching a small hive of flying insects is one thing. Harnessing their capability is quite another.
Lewis and Rains, the Georgia-based researchers, received funding in 1998 and began actively working on the Wasp Hound. They hope it will make it to market in five to ten years.
The Wasp Hound is a tube made of PVC pipe. At one end is a clear plastic chamber, about two inches (five centimeters) in diameter and an inch (two and a half centimeters) deep, where the wasps are housed.
"It's like a cap that you can take on and off," Rains explained. The chamber has vent holes, a fan, and a miniature camera connected to a computer.
When the wasps aren't working "they just randomly walk around" in their chamber, Rains said. But when the wasps encounter a smell they have been trained to recognize, the hungry insects congregate near the odor source, hoping for food.
The mini-cam tracks their movement, sending pictures to the computer, which analyzes the images and triggers an alarm within 30 seconds.
The insects are so sensitive that they react less or more strongly, depending on the strength of the smell they are exposed to, Rains says.
The wasps can be used for 48 hours. After they complete their shift "we just let them go," Rains explained.
The Wasp Hound has only been tested under laboratory conditions. It needs to be rigorously tested in cold weather, dusty conditions, and other real-world situations before it will be ready for widespread use, Rains said.
Before it appears on the market, the Wasp Hound needs to have infrastructure behind it—breeding laboratories and a system for packing and shipping the devices.
"An idea we're toying with is having one Hound with five cartridges for detecting five different odors," Rains said.
"We're pretty much on the forefront of this type of work," he said. "
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