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Chinese boffins control pigeons' brains

by on27 October 2022


Next, sharks with laser beams 

Chinese boffins claim to have built a solar-powered brain control device to steer a pigeon in flight for about two hours, paving the way for surveillance which sh*ts on you from a great height.

A professor at the college of electrical and automation engineering at Shandong University of Science and Technology in eastern China has been working with a team to studying the use of robotics in animals.

According to the peer-reviewed Journal of Biomedical Engineering, a solar panel about half the size of a smartphone screen was strapped to a pigeon’s back to power a control device on the bird’s head.

This solar panel was meant to charge a small lithium battery which then powered the brain control device on the pigeon’s head that generated nerve-stimulating signals while maintaining wireless communication with the home base.

Controlling the brains of pigeons is not that tricky, given they not exactly bright. Huai and her team, previous experiments of brain control on pigeons saw the birds following human commands for around 45 minutes.

However, the flight was limited to the size of battery the birds could carry while the device can be charged in the sun autonomously if the remaining power is low.

The behavior of the birds is manipulated through the generation of neural signals that trigger unpleasant sensations such as pain or fear, prompting an immediate action such as turning right or left.

Although you would think that the Chinese would be ahead of the field in brain control, it appears that the Middle Kingdom is playing catch-up with the West, with claims of breakthroughs such as the controlled movement of a swarm of animals, an automatic guidance system based on GPS, and image recognition to direct an animal to a location without human intervention.

China’s People’s Liberation Army is apparently interested in using brain-controlled animals to carry intelligence-gathering instruments of weapons in dangerous situations like anti-terrorist operations or combat missions.

DARPA was reportedly soliciting ideas for using insects as bomb sniffers, possibly by installing a microchip into the organism while it is still in the pupa stage.

More famously it was using Blue Sharks implanted with brain control devices to follow vessels while remaining undetected. The idea that they might be armed with lasers was an internet idea. 

The team’s experiment involving five pigeons reportedly demonstrated that the birds could obey simple commands, such as turning to the right or left, read the Daily Mail with 80-90 per centaccuracy. Sometimes, the birds would not respond because of fatigue or strong, unexpected shiny objects in the open environment.

Huai also said that the performance of the brain control device could be improved if it is coupled with artificial intelligence, as it would reduce the burden of gathering data and calculation. She said better solar panels would also improve the conversion rate of sunlight to electricity.

 

Last modified on 27 October 2022
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