Boffins unleash robotic cockroach

[LibLabUK]

A tripartite alliance of scientists has developed what it claims will will be the solution to the perennial cockroach problem - a robotic Judas roach which will have the capability to seek, locate and betray its insect counterparts. The Belgian, French and Swiss team says that the invention is "a breakthrough in mankind’s struggle to control the animal kingdom", the Times reports.

The undercover InsBot is the result of three years' research into cockroach behaviour which resulted in a computer programme allowing a cyberroach to mimic its victims' social habits. Professor Jean-Louis Deneubourg, of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, said: “Cockroaches like contact with each other. When they meet, they stay still. They are happy to be with a friend for a few moments. The more friends around them, the longer they stay.”

Bless. Next on the agenda was to construct the matchbox-sized InsBot and arm it with lasers, infra-red sensors and roach scent to allow it to move in complete darkness and properly interact with the cockroach community. Deneubourg is currently carrying out tests to demonstrate that while cockroaches will naturally gravitate to a dark shelter, if the Judas roach leads them to a lit shelter they will follow - presumably to their destruction. The prof notes: “It is plausible and realistic to imagine that, in five or ten years’ time, people with a cockroach infestation will be buying robots to get rid of them."

<snip>

Source:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/15/robotic_cockroach/">The Register

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. You left out the best bit!

"Although the InsBot researchers believe that they are contributing to our eventual subjugation of the animal kingdom, it's evident that taking the only creature on God's Earth capable of withstanding a nuclear holocaust and bringing it into contact with its ostensible nememis can only end one way - post apocalyptic winter with a human slave army serving the merciless hordes of bomb-proof, laser-armed roboroach hybrids. We cannot stress strongly enough that this research must stop now, the lab be consigned to the flames and all elements of the InsBot dissolved in molten steel."

[LibLabUK]

3. Ahh..

That was the 'reward' for clicking the link to read more :)

[DavidDvorkin]

2. This will be fine until . . .

. . . the little robots develop minds of their own, and we find ourselves in the middle of a Philip K. Dick story! Aaiiieeee!

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Robot cockroaches are no problem

But what's a boffin ... ?

--bkl

[DavidDvorkin]

5. A boffin is

a scientist or a tech whiz.

British usage.

[phantom power]

6. The American Boffin is endangered.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. The best American boffins

are headed across the Atlantic.

Can the local population of the species be saved? Perhaps it will have to reestablished in the future by seeding it with boffins captured in Europe and released into the American wilds.

[LibLabUK]

8. Hmm... sorry.

Boffin is a strange word. No one is really sure when and where it came into usage, but it has been used to describe scientists, engineers and generally intelligent persons of technological or scientific persuasion since at least the 1940s (watch some of the old British WWII movies and you'll no doubt hear it). It nearly always applies only to men, I've never heard of a woman being referred to as a boffin.

James Bond's Q would be a boffin of the highest order.

Interestingly enough, whilst I was at school (1980s to mid 1990s the word Boffin was an insult. Boffin replaced swat as meaning an overly intelligent boy, and was seen as quite derisory. I think to some extent the way science and technology is seen today has meant that the word has been reclaimed and is now seen as an accolade rather than an insult.

The Register now routinely refers to scientists as boffins.... it's one of the, I think rather nice, editorial quirks.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. I first saw the term in the British tabloids

One of them put out a book of their more wacked-out stories, called The Joy of Sport (I assume Sport was the name of the tab).

On just about every other page, there was some lewd anecdote and the word "boffin". I figured that "boffin" came from "boff", which is slang in America for "sexual intercourse". In other words, the editors of Sport were calling these people "f*ckers".

So much for my skill at linguistic archeology.

--bkl