Tweet
More to the article than quoted below, some of which is downright spooky when you think about it;
Dr. Mordrid
hat team is among a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys. These researchers hope such implants will improve our understanding of how the animals interact with their environment, as well as boosting research into tackling human paralysis.
More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week.
>
>
>
>
Meanwhile DARPA too plans to take its shark implants out of the laboratory. Project engineer Walter Gomes of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, says the team's next step will be to implant the device into blue sharks and release them into the ocean off the coast of Florida.
However, the radio signals used to direct the dogfish in the tank will not penetrate water, so the engineers plan to communicate with the sharks using sonar. According to Gomes, the navy already has acoustic signalling towers in the area that are suitable for relaying messages from a ship to a shark up to 300 kilometres away. The team has designed a sonar receiver shaped like a remora fish to minimise drag when attached to the animal.
The scientists will be particularly interested in the sharks' health during the tests. As wild predators, it is very easy to exhaust them, and this will place strict limits on how long the researchers can control their movements in any one session without harming them. Despite this limitation, though, remote controlled sharks do have advantages that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they are silent, and they power themselves.
More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week.
>
>
>
>
Meanwhile DARPA too plans to take its shark implants out of the laboratory. Project engineer Walter Gomes of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, says the team's next step will be to implant the device into blue sharks and release them into the ocean off the coast of Florida.
However, the radio signals used to direct the dogfish in the tank will not penetrate water, so the engineers plan to communicate with the sharks using sonar. According to Gomes, the navy already has acoustic signalling towers in the area that are suitable for relaying messages from a ship to a shark up to 300 kilometres away. The team has designed a sonar receiver shaped like a remora fish to minimise drag when attached to the animal.
The scientists will be particularly interested in the sharks' health during the tests. As wild predators, it is very easy to exhaust them, and this will place strict limits on how long the researchers can control their movements in any one session without harming them. Despite this limitation, though, remote controlled sharks do have advantages that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they are silent, and they power themselves.
). The next step will be remote controlled mammals, and where do we go from there?
Comment