Nanotechnology Research Is Turning Insects Into Flying Cyborgs For Environmental Monitoring and Security Surveillance

It's not science fiction, it's real.

Researchers from Cornell University are implanting nanotechnology based microfluidic devices in insects before they hatch into fully grown flying creatures. When they emerge, the insects have incroporated the devices into their bodies and are, in effect, fully functioning cyborgs.

Scientists have previously tried to build microscopic flying devices but the problems of fuel, engines ad aerodynamics have caused these efforts to fail. Insects already have these problems solved naturally. By adding different nanotechnology enabled devices to insects they can be used for a range of different tasks from detecting environmental hazards to security surveillance.

Cornell have released a video showing one of their "cyborg sentinel" insects.