Cockroaches fitted with microphones to aid disaster relief missions

The technology is designed to help emergency personnel find and rescue survivors in the aftermath of a disaster.

The researchers have also developed technology that can be used as a so-called invisible fence to keep the biobots in the disaster area.

‘In a collapsed building, sound is the best way to find survivors,’ said Dr Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and senior author of two papers on the work.

According to NC State, the biobots are equipped with electronic backpacks that control the cockroach’s movements. Bozkurt’s research team has created two types of customised backpacks using microphones. One type of biobot has a single microphone that can capture relatively high-resolution sound from any direction to be wirelessly transmitted to first responders.

The second type of biobot is equipped with an array of three directional microphones to detect the direction of the sound. The research team is also said to have developed algorithms that analyse the sound from the microphone array to localise the source of the sound and steer the biobot in that direction. The system worked well during laboratory testing.