Part moth, part machine: Cyborgs are on the move | The Global Transition The Singularity, Transumanism, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics

Part moth, part machine: Cyborgs are on the move | The Global Transition The Singularity, Transumanism, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics: "A MALE silk moth gets a whiff of pheromones and begins a complex search pattern to track down a potential mate – a brief surge forward, an intricate zigzag, a sweeping loop. For this deluded moth there is no female to find, and its movements are enacted by a wheeled robot plugged into its lovesick brain. This cyborg moth is the latest demonstration of how scientists coax complex behaviour from robots by tapping into the nervous systems of living organisms, co-opting algorithms that already exist in nature. “Biological organisms can solve problems that are too difficult for computer engineers,” says Ferdinando Mussa-Ivaldi, a pioneer in the field at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois."