
Insect-worn microcamera streams video to phone 120 meters away - bookofjoe
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/uw-micro-camera
======
tijuco2
I've seen another study, which in my opinion is way more useful, where they
are able to control a cockroaches using electrical pulses on their antennas.
With a camera attached to its back, these cockroachs will be able to find
people underneath rubbles.

~~~
loktarogar
In Fifth Element, pretty much exactly this was used to spy on the President.
(it was squished)

~~~
ngold
That's the only image stuck in my head since reading the headline. Glad to see
they are in fact reality. Such a great movie, except the ten minutes of ruby
rod screaming.

~~~
cryptoz
The whole movie is great, especially IMO the Ruby Rhod scenes!

------
james1966
They used a rather large camera...

The smallest known camera module is the OmniVision OV6948, has the dimensions:
0.65 x 0.65 x 1.158mm, including 120 degree wide lens.

Sadly it cannot be purchased in single quantities :(

[1] [https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/worlds-smallest-
came...](https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/worlds-smallest-camera-is-
the-size-of-a-grain-of-sand)

~~~
tofof
Interesting. That OV06948 camera is also 40k (200x200) pixels, 30fps, and RGB.
Critically, the page you link lists its weight at 0.87g = 870mg, which would
make it 157x denser than lead.[1] The actual spec sheet says 0.87 mg, i.e.
less than one milligram, which is incredible.[2] It has up to a 4 meter range,
which I understand to be wired, so it would still need some sort of
transmitter.

The camera used by these researchers, including its lens and panning head, is
200 mg (77 for the sensor and lens and mount, 7 mg bluetooth chip, and 96 mg
boost converter). It's only 20k (160x120) resolution, monochrome. It has a
wireless 120 m range.

The killer, however, seems to be power. The 10 mAh battery alone weighs 500
mg, which means the 200 mg vs <1 mg comparison becomes more like 700 vs 501.

The OV06948's power usage is 25 mW, which means a 10 mAh / (25 mW / 3.3 V) =
1.32 hour runtime, capturing 142k frames of video. The bug rig gets 6 hours,
capturing only 108,000 frames of video. Perhaps you could get longer battery
life out of the OV06948 if you slowed the framerate.

[1]
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28870+mg+%2F+%280.65+...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28870+mg+%2F+%280.65+mm+x+0.65+mm+x+1.158mm%29%29+%2F+density+of+lead)

[2]
[https://www.ovt.com/download/sensorpdf/553/OmniVision_OVM694...](https://www.ovt.com/download/sensorpdf/553/OmniVision_OVM6948.pdf)

~~~
zaroth
Unfortunately this seems outside the bounds for ambient RF energy harvesting,
even if you don’t mind dropping a few frames to charge back up if the
capacitor runs low.

The rectenna would have to be much too large to produce anywhere near 25mW
even at a 10% duty cycle.

I suppose if you didn’t mind ramping the RF output power way up you could
shrink the antenna size, but not much smaller than 1cm^2 I think.

------
mola
Am I the only one who finds this enslaving of living things troublesome? I
mean livestock enslavement is problematic, but the necessity for food could
'morally compensate' for it. Plus originally these animals were part of the
family. Industrialization kinda blew the whole balance there. But again,
feeding people is a necessity so while I can argue against excessive use of
livestock, I find it morally ambivalent.

But this doesn't come out of any necessity. What uses are there for this? I
bet 90% of usage for this is Surveillance. So we enslave living things just to
enhance enslavement of human beings. I don't know, this feels very off.

Edit: I'm not the only one, cool.

~~~
vianneychevalie
I wholeheartedly disagree with the use of the word "enslavement". Anti-specism
is an opinion, a framework of thought that I find wrong, and that I believe is
going in the wrong direction. I do consider myself superior to animals, and
would be ready to sacrifice a large number of animals to save one human life.

While slavery is wrong, the semantic parallel you're building between slavery
and scientific research on animals devalues the horror of being owned, lived
by actual human beings.

There needs to be more debate and measure in the way we present animal pain
and animal exploitation, which I believe are both acceptable. I wouldn't hit
my dog! But I understand that we need to put down dogs in animal shelters
without calling it a mass murder.

When you say "livestock enslavement is problematic" you're stating an opinion
as if it were a fact.

However, I completely agree with you with the fact that we should limit this
type of surveillance-focused research, which could end up in net negative
happiness in the world.

~~~
dTal
>But I understand that we need to put down dogs in animal shelters without
calling it a mass murder.

If you're totally fine with it, why not just say "kill" instead of the
soothing euphemism?

~~~
celticninja
Because when my dog is old and he is in pain and it won't get any better, I
want to gently, let him go, to put him down/to rest. I don't want to 'kill'
him. That's what the police would do to someone's innocent dog. Words have
emotional connotations.

~~~
tripzilch
Which absolutely has nothing to do with "animal pain and animal exploitation",
which the GP believes is acceptable, and was using the killing of their dog,
somehow as .. I'm not sure how their argument works, because obviously the way
we exploit animals is _nothing_ like the way we would gently send a puppy to
their final resting place in puppy heaven.

------
ChuckMcM
Excellent work. I'm old enough to remember when putting wireless vision
systems on a robot required a kilogram at least :-). Of course this would be
made even simpler if you integrated the vision sensor, the BLE radio, and the
control system into a single die. Something that would be quite accessible to
nation states and sufficiently bored billionaires. Ambient energy harvesting
has also made great strides so the days of persistent and difficult detect
surveillance are getting closer.

~~~
unnouinceput
With high power towers for cell network and plenty of devices that emit radio,
you can have a wireless power harvester that can be powered forever if you
lower you energy consumption below a given threshold.

Also was an experiment a while ago where photons were both feeding the camera
sensor and used to get the image itself. Granted resolution and clarity was
bad but the images still could be used to recognize stuff. Combine that with a
smart AI at receiver site and you can have full surveillance, at least for
counting bodies (humans + cars) for your desired place (think gathering places
like Tienanmen).

------
jameslk
Cool tech but I'm not as excited about the surveillance this will enable

~~~
mhh__
If it's remotely possible I can almost guarantee the three letter agencies
around the world are using it already (or have tried).

MI5 were lifting encryption keys via acoustic analysis of typing something
like 65 years ago [Wright, Spycatcher]. And their budget was fairly limited,
as opposed to the US agencies with their basically unlimited budgets (i.e.
NRO)

~~~
Mindwipe
The CIA were mounting cameras on cats in East Germany in the early 70s even.

I read a book suggesting that programme was discontinued as the cats kept
getting involved in road traffic accidents.

------
woodruffw
Yet another win for the Fifth Element[1].

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrHMBletjXg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrHMBletjXg)

~~~
barmstrong
Is there a list of others?

I love using sci fi as inspiration for new products.

~~~
spc476
There's the 1974 book _Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy_ [1][2], which for a kid's
book, goes into some deep ramifications of such a device.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy)

[2] It's not invisibility ala The Invisible Man, but instead a dragonfly sized
drone.

~~~
fluffernutter
I remember that book and it had immersive feedback gloves that controlled the
dragonfly.

------
ourmandave
I suppose the spooks at the CIA are all, "5fps, you're adorable."

~~~
mchan889
"That's a large bug, have you considered something smaller? Maybe a mosquito?"

\- Someone somewhere on a DARPA project

------
tomrod
Fascinating! But I am a bit disappointed there isn't a video taken solely by
an insect. All the tech highlights without a demo.

~~~
jameslk
Doesn't the video in the article show this? Here's the video:
[https://youtu.be/115BGUZopHs](https://youtu.be/115BGUZopHs)

~~~
ummonk
I think people overlook it (I did) because it looks like an ad.

------
distant_hat
If this is where the open stuff is I can only wonder where the classified
stuff is at.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Generally, given what we've seen with things like the space race and ARPA-net,
roughly 10-20 years ahead, depending on the technology.

------
OriPekelman
OK kids, I need help here. There was a sci-fi novel, probably the sixties,
called something like "little bugs have little bugs on them". The premise was
basically that.. A cold war where one side puts bugs on the bugs of the other
side. Rings any bells? Potentially there were also some aspects of bug driven
assassinations... But I am unsure. This thing been bugging me.

~~~
ficklepickle
I think I may have found it on the wikipedia page for nanotechnology in
fiction:

> The 1984 novel Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem tells about small bacteria-
> sized nanorobots looking as normal dust (developed by artificial
> intelligence placed by humans on the Moon in the era of cold warfare) that
> has later came to Earth and are replicating, destroying all weapons, modern
> technology and software, leaving living organisms (as there were no living
> organisms on the Moon) intact.

It's not a perfect match for your description, nor is it from the 60s, but it
was the closest match I could find. Is that the book you were thinking of?

~~~
OriPekelman
OK. The plot thickens. [https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/big-fleas-have-
little-fl...](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/big-fleas-have-little-fleas-
upon-their-back-to-bite-em.html) so .. this is the phrase I remember. Probably
the "motto" used by the SF author. Now I remember Peace on earth... and BTW à
propos the article cited .. the spy bugs there have very partial vision .. and
if I remember correctly they recompose scenes from the multitude of images...
I think this is as far as I am going to get. Thank you!

------
apocalypstyx
And yet once again it's demonstrated we're living Philip K. Dick's "Reality".

------
rv-de
Am I the only one here at least considering the ethical aspect of attaching
some device to an insect?

Maybe I'm sentimental and contradictory because when I drive a car over the
Autobahn I'm killing hundreds of insects in an hour. At the same time I cannot
harm a bug intentionally.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
It's like killing a spider in the house. Killing it instead of taking it
outside doesn't bring me any benefit the way eating a chicken does, so why
kill it? Just like putting the camera rig on an actual beetle for the demo
doesn't bring a benefit, so why do it?

~~~
cgriswald
That’s only true if your time has no value. Killing is faster. Also, as
someone who has gotten multiple infections from non-venomous spider bites, I
can tell you catch and release is riskier than killing.

~~~
metta2uall
Most killing also splatters their insides, with potentially infectious germs,
into your house..

~~~
cgriswald
That’s usually taken care of with the method of killing. Regardless, in your
house is preferable to inside your skin.

------
hojjat12000
> The technology can be used to study insects in the field

Hmmmm... Of course... That is how it is gonna be used.

~~~
14
I imagine there will be all sorts of uses out of the ordinary for things like
this. Study insects in the wild. Rescue missions in destroyed buildings. Land
on a window and voyeur. Go into Area 51 see what is happening. Murder by
poison in the night. AI trained software these bugs roaming the crops AI
reporting back weeds pests and health of the plants, sewer exploration, bug
races for entertainment, just to run a bug up your sisters leg and video it to
Youtube. I could go on so let us hope these come available for all of us not
just spooks.

------
walterbell
From the article:

> _The power system is the primary limitation here, but it might be possible
> to use a solar cell to cut down on battery requirements ... with a long-
> range wireless link and a vision system, it’s possible to add sophisticated
> vision-based autonomy to tiny robots by doing the computation remotely_

Since WiFi can be used to see through walls and ceilings of buildings and
homes, using low-cost passive sensors, such devices can be autonomously
navigated. E.g. for indoor use, knowing light source locations for charging
and camouflage.

From
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235234092...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235234092030562X)
(2020):

 _> our dataset provides a collection of Wi-Fi signals that are recorded for
40 different pairs of subjects while performing twelve two-person
interactions. The presented dataset can be exploited to advance Wi-Fi-based
human activity recognition in different aspects, such as the use of various
machine learning algorithms to recognize different human-to-human
interactions._

Related project:
[https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/](https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/)

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crispyporkbites
Once they get it down to flying insects, would it be possible to deploy a
swarm of these (thousands) and use positioning data to generate high
resolution 3D imagery?

~~~
nikhizzle
What you are asking for is along the lines of Microsoft Photosynth released
circa 2008.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth)

~~~
contingencies
The academic field is called
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry)
and was an outgrowth of early military aviation. There are now numerous open
source implementations.

------
a012
The movie "Eye in the sky" isn't far from reality where they used a bug-like
drone to spy on POI, except its drone's framerate and resolution are
exaggerated.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2057392](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2057392)

------
TLightful
Great. I'm a huge nature lover. Literally wouldn't hurt a fly.

But I'll be stocking up on insect-killing sprays.

To coin a phrase, this is the "progress of d!ckheads".

------
robbrown451
I saw "steerable" and was hoping they had wired something up the pleasure
centers of the insect's brains so they they could steer them around like
little RC vehicles. (nope... they can only point the camera)

I believe I saw somewhere they did that with rats. Fascinating, and yet so f'd
up.

------
sillysaurusx
The title made it sound like a fly or an ant, but in reality it’s a rather
large beetle. It’s neat work though.

For a redteam project, I once made a spy camera that fit in a belt buckle. I’m
not sure you’ll need to worry about surveillance implications of insect-
mounted cameras; surveillance is already pervasive.

~~~
Nbox9
Imagine releasing the bug near a restricted area. The attacker can hope it
gets past security and gain images from inside the restricted area. If it gets
caught then the attacker if up to 120M away, which is a good head start.

~~~
echelon
Or the video is bounced over a cell-enabled relay and the attacker is nowhere
nearby.

~~~
Nbox9
Good point. The maximum distance the attacker could be would be limited by the
act of releasing an insect and the biological limitations of insects
(lifespan, travel speed), not by the range of the wireless communication.

------
mirimir
I wonder what sort of "video" you could get from the insects' visual systems.
Maybe there's no imaging _per se_ , just a bunch of feature-detection stuff.
And in any case, it won't likely happen any time soon.

------
ur-whale
Unless they've managed to somehow hook the output of the cam to the cortex of
the bug thereby allowing it to do things it previously couldn't, I find the
article a tad disappointing: this is one _huge_ bug. Does it even fly?

------
kebman
This is something I'd expect James Bond to have in his pocket.^[007]

[007]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8KvYKn9-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8KvYKn9-0)

------
ramblerman
Bah, this really is the low hanging fruit of progress.

Make cameras smaller, and super glue them to a bug. Is there really a point,
besides the trendy headline?

~~~
1123581321
Miniaturization and weight reduction of existing technology are worthy
scientific pursuits.

------
tazedsoul
If the time will ever come that scientists and engineers should adopt some
ethical responsibility for their work, it is now.

~~~
hilbert42
If ever there was a time when ethics is need in engineering decisions, it's
now (for years, I've preached that ethics ought to be part of engineering
courses).

In various posts years ago I predicted that this spying/privacy scenario wound
happen comparatively soon, now it has happened. I then said to the effect that
how is 'security' going to check every bug or fly that flies into a military
research establishment and sits on a loaf of bread in the staff canteen and
then proceeds to listen to scientists discussing secret info.

It's bloody nightmare I recon, and methinks it'll only get much worse. Heavens
knows where the endpoint of this is likely to be.

------
partiallypro
The resolution is so low it's not of much use for intel services at the moment
(160x120 monochrome.)

~~~
jahnu
Are you kidding?

~~~
partiallypro
No, considering how large that thing on the bug is, and how easily it would be
seen, it would need to be much closer to something in order to see anything.
It would be cheaper/more effective to simply use normal means.

------
de6u99er
Sponsored by Facebook or Twitter? Good luck sueing a mayfly without an
instacourt in place.

------
Wistar
"Why is your camera covered with all these little furrows?"

"Oh, it is insect worn."

------
amelius
I'm thinking of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute)

Who will own the copyright on the video?

------
stonecharioteer
Dr. Gero! Don't make Cell! Please!

------
SMAAART
Holy Batman! Now apply Moore's law to that and figure out where we'd be in
10-20 years #SCARY_AF

~~~
arthurcolle
Moore's Law doesn't really work anymore. It hasn't held for the last 4 years,
IIRC. That's why a lot of focus has been on multicore systems to try and get
new speedups based on parallel computing as opposed to getting purely single-
chip improvements.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Moores law is strictly about transistor count and not performance, it is just
that we are only now seeing the two come decoupled.

~~~
arthurcolle
Aren't transistor count and performance very positively correlated?

~~~
ComputerGuru
They are, but performance in teraflops is not the same as performance in
general computing activities. We are now scaling horizontally within a single
cpu package.

~~~
arthurcolle
Wow that's crazy, I had no idea. Do you have a link on arxiv or something I
can check out?

------
ecoled_ame
biologist here .. why can’t this camera transmit higher quality video?

~~~
detaro
Generally, there' a tradeoff between quality vs size (mostly through energy:
processing and _sending_ more data needs more energy, which needs a bigger
power source).

Presumably they also picked some reasonably available and suitable parts and
tried what they can get, so there might be room for improvements now there is
a baseline established.

------
fearingreprisal
Here's technology that certainly couldn't possibly be misused to infringe upon
civil liberties...

------
lifeisstillgood
I'be been banging on about MOOP - Massive open online psychology- where we
basically monitor our daily interactions such as conversations with kids
partners etc, and build a society wide set of best practises and can then be
guided in real time by these best practises (if you have ever seen those shows
where a Nanny lives full time for a week with a family that the kind of thing)

But it only works if the data is treated _medically_. we won't ever stop the
three letter agencies from abusing it (entirely) but we need to make PII more
than GDPR and make it as sacrosanct in law as lawyer client / doctor patient
confidentiality.

