Washinton engineers design locust-inspired robotic 'nose' to be used to find terrorists

Dogs may be man's best friend when it comes to sniffing out bombs at airports, but they could one day be replaced by cyborg'insects'. Engineers hope to exploit the locust's incredible sense of smell to create robotic'noses' inspired by the insects that could be used by homeland security officers. The system would be capable of picking out certain smells from a jumble of other scents, just like locusts can do. To come up with a man-made equivalent of the locust's sense of smell, the experts will monitor neural activity from an insect's brain while it's exploring its surroundings and work out how it decodes the smells present As a swarm increases in size, the locusts in it are more likely to stay on course. In a small group, the researchers found that locusts don't really interact.