1. Cyborg

Category Archives: Cyborg

Batman Kills the Ender Dragon – Cyborg Portal Cows! – Let’s Play Minecraft #23 – Video

Posted on by


Batman Kills the Ender Dragon - Cyborg Portal Cows! - Let #39;s Play Minecraft #23
Part 23 of the Minecraft Let #39;s Play: Batman Kills the Ender Dragon! Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/NewVegasLight Got Steam?: http://steamcommun...

By: NewVegasLightning

Read this article:

Batman Kills the Ender Dragon - Cyborg Portal Cows! - Let's Play Minecraft #23 - Video

Your Very Own Cyborg Roach

Posted on by

If the thought of a cockroach scuttling around on the floor is enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, then youd better steer clear of this weeks TEDGlobal conference taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Then again, what neuroscientist Greg Gage has up his sleeve (not a cockroach, by the way) may intrigue you to such a degree that you might actually be able to stand the sight of that pesky little critter trotting about.

The thing is, Gage will be controlling the insect with a smartphone. If only it were that simply with all cockroaches, then we could simply steer them straight into the yard and up the street, never to be seen again.

The theme of the Edinburgh conference, which kicked off in the Scottish capital on Monday, is think again, with Gage set to take to the stage with his so-called RoboRoach on Wednesday.

Gage told the BBC that during his presentation he plans to attach a small electronic backpack to his pet roach under anesthetic (thats the roach, not Gage), a backpack that apparently communicates directly with the neurons in the cockroachs antenna.

The neurons communicate information to the roachs brain using electricity, enabling Gage to control the movements of the cockroach cyborg with a smartphone or some such device.

But before you begin to wonder if Gage is one whisker short of a full beard, best to hear him out.

This is not just a gimmick, he told the BBC. The technique is the same as that used to treat Parkinsons disease and in cochlear implants. The point of the project is to create a tool to learn about how our brain works. On the TED website Gage says he wants to show how brains receive and deliver electric impulses.

OK, its starting to make sense now.

Excerpt from:

Your Very Own Cyborg Roach

New ‘cyborg roach’ controlled by smartphone app

Posted on by

RoboRoach kit lets you implant electrodes in a live cockroach and control it with your smartphone.

University of Michigan grads Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo have created RoboRoach, a kit that lets you control a living cyborg cockroach with just your smartphone.

The pair came up with the cyborg roach idea to get students interested in neuroscience and neurotechnology using commercially available electronics, and launched their Backyard Brains startup.

The $100 RoboRoach kit comes with everything a kid -- or adult -- needs to perform cockroach brain surgery. Users can anesthetize the cockroach in an ice bath and attach wires to the bug's antennae and install electrodes in its brain.

The 4.4 gram "backpack" on the upgraded cyborg roach communicates through your smartphone's Bluetooth to take instructions through the RoboRoach app.

Currently, Backyard Brains is raising money through a Kickstarter campaign to develop more fine-tuned prototypes.

The RoboRoach project was also presented this week at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, where it inspired controversy over ethical treatment of the cockroaches, though RoboRoach creators say the stimulation doesnt shock or harm the cockroach.

See the article here:

New 'cyborg roach' controlled by smartphone app

Cyborg Cockroach Controlled By Phone

Posted on by

Next time you happen across an enormous cockroach, check to see whether its got a backpack on. Then look for the person controlling its movements with a phone. The RoboRoach has arrived.

The RoboRoach is a system created by University of Michigan grads who have backgrounds in neuroscience,Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo. They came up with the cyborg roach idea as part of an effort to show students what real brain spiking activity looks like using off-the-shelf electronics.

VIDEO: Vomiting Robot Helps Humanity

Essentially the RoboRoach involves taking a real live cockroach, putting it under anesthesia and placing wires in its antenna. Then the cockroach is outfitted with a special lightweight little backpack Gage and Marzullo developed that sends pulses to the antenna, causing the neurons to fire and the roach to think theres a wall on one side.So it turns. The backpack connects to a phone via Bluetooth, enabling a human user to steer the cockroach through an app.

Why? Why would anyone do this?We want to create neural interfaces that the general public can use, the scientists say in a video. Typically, to understand how these hardware devices and biological interfaces work, youd have to go to graduate school in a neuro-engineering lab. They added that the product is a learning tool, not a toy, and through it they hope to start a neuro-revolution.

Currently the duosBackyard Brains startup is raising money through a Kickstarter campaign to develop more fine-tuned prototypes, make them more affordable, and extend battery life. The startup says it will make the RoboRoach hardware by hand in an Ann Arbor hacker space.

This week the RoboRoach project was presented at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, and stirred up a bit of controversy. Although the RoboRoach creators say the stimulation doesnt shock or harm the cockroach, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animalstold the BBC it has concerns about the technology. The neuroscientists opinion that the process doesnt impose pain isnt enough for the group.

Mind Meld! Top Brain-Controlled Techs

Living in New York City, I battled plenty of cockroach invaders, including the large kind required for RoboRoach. So I cant really be impartial in this particular ethical debate. But if teachers want to use cockroaches to show kids how the brain works, that sounds OK by me. Its only when the insects become cyborgs on their own that wed really have to worry.

Photo: The remote-controlled RoboRoach in action. Credit: Backyard Brains

Originally posted here:

Cyborg Cockroach Controlled By Phone

Kickstarter Project Funds Cyborg Cockroaches

Posted on by

June 12, 2013

Image Credit: Backyard Brains

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

A new Kickstarter project wants to allow you to own and control your own cyborg cockroach.

The RoboRoach is the worlds first commercially available Insect Cyborg that involves neuroscience and engineering. Researchers from Backyard Brains created a device that allows you to install a pack to the antenna of a cockroach and control the insect using an app available on the iPhone.

Our RoboRoach is an innovative marriage of behavioral neuroscience and neural engineering, the Backyard Brains researchers wrote on their Kickstarter page. Cockroaches use the antennas on their head to navigate the world around them. When these antennas touch a wall, the cockroach turns away from the wall. The antenna of a cockroach contains neurons that are sensitive to touch and smell.

They said the neurons help to convey information back to the brain using electricity in the form of spikes. A backpack installed on the back of the cockroach helps communicate directly to the neurons using small electrical pulses.

When you send the command from your mobile phone, the backpack sends pulses to the antenna, which causes the neurons to fire, which causes the roach to think there is a wall on one side, the scientists wrote.

By utilizing this method, the researchers have devised a way for you to control the direction in which a cockroach is turning, all from your iPhone. This technology is the same used to treat Parkinsons disease and is also used in cochlear implants. They said the funding will help better their research into this technology, which could even spill over into other neurological fields as well as help the publics understanding of neurology.

This product is not a toy, but a tool to learn about how our brains work. Using the RoboRoach, you will be able to discover a number of interesting things about nature, the researchers said.

Read more:

Kickstarter Project Funds Cyborg Cockroaches

RoboRoach: Control a live cyborg cockroach from your phone

Posted on by

In what they dub a marriage of behavioral neuroscience and neural engineering, the minds at Backyard Brains have mounted a Kickstarter project that lets you build your own cyborg out of a bug.

How are your surgery skills, and how do you feel about using them on a creepy crawly cockroach? If your answers are between "excellent" and "I'm willing to find out," there's now a way to create your very own, smartphone-controlled cyborg insect.

RoboRoach, from Backyard Brains -- the same science-minded folks who played Cypress Hill to a squid -- is not for the squeamish. Like many of the group's experiments and projects, it requires at least some vivisection.

The way it works is pretty interesting. A cockroach gets around by relying partly on its antennae. Sensitive to touch and smell, the antennae signal what to avoid, such as walls, and where the insect can find food. The RoboRoach rig runs a wire down each antenna to artificially stimulate the nerve, allowing Bluetooth commands to be sent to the bug to tell it where to go.

While this isn't the first time we've seen a cyborg cockroach, such creations are now crawling into the public sphere. The RoboRoach kit, which comes with a minimum $100 pledge, consists of the "backpack" and helmet, recording electrodes, and a battery. You need to supply your own Bluetooth device, insect, and surgery (you can anesthetize a cockroach by putting it in a container of iced water, no fancy drugs required).

The team is very careful to note that this is not a gimmick or a toy; it's a learning tool for observing neural control.

"The RoboRoach is the world's first commercially available cyborg!" Backyard Brains said. "That's right... a real-life insect cyborg! Part cockroach and part machine. This is not a gimmick... just good ol' fashion neuroscience, evolution and engineering."

For those who have ethical concerns about performing experiments on live creatures, Backyard Brains acknowledges that "our experiments are not philosophically perfect and without controversy," and posted a response to the most common qualms.

(Source: Crave Australia)

See the rest here:

RoboRoach: Control a live cyborg cockroach from your phone

CYBORG SURPRISE! – Black Ops 2 Live w/PeateElite! New Camo DLC (Black Ops 2 Multiplayer Gameplay) – Video

Posted on by


CYBORG SURPRISE! - Black Ops 2 Live w/PeateElite! New Camo DLC (Black Ops 2 Multiplayer Gameplay)
Subscribe to See more videos! http://www.youtube.com/user/PeateElite?feature=mhee #9675; My Twitter - http://bit.ly/XQ0d9b #9675; My Facebook - http://on.fb.me/15Sdj7H.

By: PeateElite

See the article here:

CYBORG SURPRISE! - Black Ops 2 Live w/PeateElite! New Camo DLC (Black Ops 2 Multiplayer Gameplay) - Video

Cyborg’80s

Posted on by


Cyborg #39;80s Petit Pois - La Shatte Poseuse (Love Love #39;80s Mi
from #12454; #12469; #12462; #12481; #12515; #12531; #12473; #12540; #12497; #12540; #12473; #12479; #12540;!! Vol.0001 (2002)

By: goodelectronicpop

See more here:

Cyborg'80s

World’s first commercial cyborg scuttles onto Kickstarter

Posted on by

The worlds first Bluetooth-controlled cyborg is here in the form of an app-enabled cockroach. And its usingKickstarter to raise money. Its also being developed and manufactured in a hackerspacea cooperative lab and machine shop space where techies can tinker and invent together.

Why RoboRoaches? A group of neuroscience junkies namedBackyard Brainsthinks the roaches can serve asexperiment kits for high school science classes, PhD students and other amateur neuroscientists. The groups flagship product, the SpikerBox, allows users to view the neurological activity of an invertebrate on a smartphone. RoboRoach improves on that product by letting users hack the bugs brain waves, control them, and steer the bugs with a smartphone.

The product, which works by sending electrical stimuli to the antennaeto steer the roachs movement, has existed in beta for almost two years. The technology is borrowed from thedeep brain stimulationused to treat Parkinsons Disease, andcochlear implantsthat help the deaf hear.

The Kickstarter funding, says head cyborg-maker Bill Reith says, will allow the group to manufacture its own hardware (right now it uses existing controllers from toy robots). The group also wants to create neuroscience lesson plans to accompany the devices.

We want to create neural interfaces that the general public can use, engineer and co-founder Tim Marzullo says in the projects Kickstarter video. Typically, to understand how these hardware devices and biological interfaces work, youd have to go to graduate school in a neuro-engineering lab.

While the technology is meant to be user-friendly, it wouldnt be easy to use the product as a toy. Thats because the backpack that delivers electrical stimuli to the roachs antennae requires a fairly delicate surgery (under ice-water anesthesia) to connect.

The company credits itshackerspace in Ann Arbor, Michigan for enabling the technologys development. Hackerspaces are home to some of the brands of tomorrow, says Reith. MakerBot is one of the first companies to gain traction, but there will soon be many more.Reith and his team hope that RoboRoach-based experiments will inspire students to engage with neuroscience. And perhaps they will inspire other hackerspace-based businesses, too.

More from Quartz

More here:

World’s first commercial cyborg scuttles onto Kickstarter


  1. Cyborg