The Roboroach Is Either The Best Or Worst Holiday Gift Ever

Let’s say you have a certain someone on your list who is really into biohacking. Let’s also assume you’re Ok with having discoid roaches in the house. Then also let’s assume you don’t mind people operating on those roaches on your dining room table. Have I got a Christmas gift idea for you!

We first talked about the Roboroach back in 2011 when we found the idea to be weird and repellent. Arguably the idea is still weird and repellent but it is also an incredible experiment in neuroscience and a great way to teach STEM to potentially bored kids.

What is the Roboroach? It’s a $99 kit that includes a small Bluetooth-powered chip and a mini surgery. Roaches cost extra but you can get them at a local pet store. They recommend discoid roaches which cannot fly and have a few helpful markers on their bodies to help in the surgery.

Please remember that this is not a toy. You are working on live insects here and whilethe folks who make these, BackyardBrains offers a detailed ethical statement, you have to be OK working and potentially killing a living thing. It’s a hard thing for kids to grasp and it’s also pretty gross if you’re not in the proper mindset.

To “install” it you have to insert a tiny wire lead into the roach’s wing muscle and then snip and connect leads to the roach’s antennae. The first step, however, is to glue a three-lead system to its head carapace. The process is at once precise and very imprecise. If you’re not a born surgeon you are sure to mess things up but the bug is essentially asleep during your ministrations thanks to an ice water bath that occurs after each step. This is not for the squeamish. The insertion of the leads is quite difficult the first time and the snipping of the antennae and insertion of the other two leads is quite scary. Everything is held together with super glue and a low temperature hot glue gun and the insect can survive the procedure and live a happy life after you experiment on it, dying a natural death albeit with a three-pronged lead attached to its head.

Once everything is installed you can simply connect a very small and light electrical stimulator to the bug and start sending signals.

How does it work? Again, you have to treat this like a scientific experiment. The system is not actually a remote control for a roach. It’s more like a signal generator that sends electrical pulses to the roach’s antennae. These pulses then send the roach moving either left or right, depending on the signal. This works only for a brief period and then neuroplasticity kicks in and the roach forgets the signals.

I did this with three kids ages 3, 6, and 9 and all of them were very weirded out but they all had a good time watching and talking about the experiment. Unlike, say, model rocketry this project is quite involved and quite advanced and I could definitely see some solid experiments coming from this kit and it should inspire some biologists of the future.

The Roboroach will either make perfect sense as a gift for someone on your holiday list or it will make no sense at all. Whether or not you want to put roaches under your tree is a judgement call only you can make but rest assured it’s a crazy and crazy fun way to learn about biohacking in a very real way.

Comments

Square’s New Apple Pay And Chip Card Reader Available To Pre-Order

Shortly after going public, Square announced that its new card reader is now available to pre-order on its website for $49. The new reader will ship in early 2016. It’s been a slow roll-out for the company’s new reader as Square first teased it at Apple’s WWDC in June. Compared to the good old Square reader that you put in your headphone jack, this one packs a few new features. First, it supports Apple Pay, and potentially other contactless payment systems. It has an NFC chip and a tokenization system for secure contactless payments. Second, the new bigger design comes with a new slot for chip cards in case you can’t pay with your phone. Finally, it’s a wireless reader that connects to your phone or tablet using Bluetooth. It has a small built-in battery and you can recharge it with a standard microUSB port. According to Square’s website , 100 retailers are already using the new reader. But the company has yet to ship the new rea...

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...

Report: Amazon Is Building An App To Let Normal People Deliver Packages For Pay

Amazon is apparently enlisting everyday humans in its network of endless online shopping delivery. The WSJ reports that the ecommerce giant is working on an app internally that would allow the average consumer to make a little cash by picking up Amazon packages at various retail locations and dropping them off at their final destination. WSJ’s sources did not have a timeline for the release of this product, internally called ‘On My Way,’ and were unsure whether it would launch at all. Amazon has spent years not only iterating the way it tailors your online shopping experience — the mega retailer has one of the best suggestion engines in the business — but also the way that it gets you your products with speed and convenience. Besides the standard shipping (or two-day for Prime members), Amazon has fiddled with the idea of letting Uber drivers and yellow cabs deliver products same-day, as well as using bike messengers and third-party delivery services for Prime N...

Budding #entrepreneur from Chandigarh University!!

Budding #entrepreneur from Chandigarh University!! #CU #students unfolded their creative ideas and presented them with a productive shape! Meet Our #Automobile #Engineering student - Trilok Singh, who has started his own start-up with the name GEARR TECHNOLOGIES under the guidance of CU-TBI. This start up focuses on affordable high end #Bicycles and its high #technology equipment’s. This start- up will bring to the Indian audience the scope of Products, #innovation, creativity and customization available in the market. Watch the video!!

India’s Nexus Venture Partners Announces New $450M Fund

Nexus Venture Partners — the top-tier Indian VC firm which counts Snapdeal , Etsy-like Craftsvilla and medtech startup Lybrate in its portfolio — has reloaded for more deals after it announced its newest $450 million fund. The fund, which is the nine-year-old firm’s fourth to date, takes it to over $1 billion in capital under management — becoming the first Indian VC to reach that milestone. Nexus, which has invested in more than 60 companies to date, said the capital will be used for seed and early-stage deals once again. In particular, the firm is looking closely at retail, financial services, health and education in the consumer space, in addition to promising companies in the enterprise space. Nexus’ previous fund — its third — closed at $270 million in 2012, but now it has ramped up in line with increased interest and activity in India’s startup space. “We are thankful to our investors that continue to ba...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog