Beetles carrying tiny backpack cameras stream footage to a smartphone

Shyam Gollakota and his colleagues at the University of Washington in the US have developed a small steerable camera that can be affixed to beetles to transmit footage from their surrounding environment in real time. The camera uses Bluetooth to stream footage to a smartphone at a resolution of 160 by 120 pixels, and at a rate of between one and five frames per second. It sits on a mechanical arm that can be remotely controlled to pivot the camera frame left and right. Capturing footage while beetles move has a power-saving advantage over insect-like robots or drones, says Gollakota. "That mobility really drains the battery a lot," he says.