It appears the good folks at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) are having some success with their latest spy equipment--bugs. No, not the kind that spies pry out from inside phone receivers and under tables, the live kind.

Scientists at various institutions around the country have been working on HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), the cyborg project, according to the recent literature, including Georgia Tech professor Robert Michelson, and D.C. DARPA scientist Amit Lal.

The project involves taking robot parts and inserting them into flying bugs like moths when the bugs are very young. The bugs then continue to grow, absorbing the machinery within, which is activated when they are large enough to fly.

This is a different branch of the project than the task of Harvard professor Robert Wood and Berkeley professor Ron Fearing, who are both working to develop a fully robotic fly, without complete success as yet.

The purpose of both projects is obviously to be able to gather information in an unnoticeable manner, "a fly on the wall," if you will. The goals of DARPA, according to this week's Time Magazine article, are to pioneer technologies for future weaponry; there's no one saying, at this point, how far in the future this project will be viable.

Or for that matter, how these tricked-out insects will learn to avoid fly-strips and bug spray in order to make the investment worthwhile in the long term.

(Sources:  Time, The Register, Wired)