Electronic brain hacks are turning insects into robotic helpers

We're a long way from directly controlling human minds remotely, but recent years have seen a string of breakthroughs in hacking the minds of insects. So at the conjunction of neuroscience and robotics lie insects -- their tiny brains still too complex to model completely, but offering an easy way into modelling certain parts of the brain. It's not hard to imagine a future where drones are grown on farms, with extra controls implanted at the larval stage -- a process developed by bionic researchers at North Carolina State University. Research published this year by biologists and chemists at Case Western Reserve University demonstrates the viability of a "biofuel cell" that would convert food eaten by an insect into energy as the insect eats. It's a much more efficient process than converting kinetic energy into electrical energy for implanted devices, and greatly improves the prospect of being able to use bugs like drones or other robots.