The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is hard at work to combine the intricacies of modern electronics with the usefulness of insects. The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (HI MEMS) is exactly what it sounds like: insects implanted with electronic circuitry capable of stimulating their muscles via specific targeted electrical impulses to turn them into GPS-guided bugs.
These new cyborgs could be used as literal bugs in surveillance missions anywhere in the world. Electronics are implanted into the subjects prior to their metamorphosis stage allowing tissue to grow over and around them. This allows the implantation of one or more sensors like a microphone or even a tiny camera. Early testing has been highly successful: “Living, adult-stage insects have emerged with the embedded systems intact.”
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