Saturday, 6 July 2013
Alper Bozkurt Develops Technique to Remotely Control Cockroaches
Remote control cockroach cyborgs
Dr. Alper Bozkurt , an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has developed a technique that uses an electronic interface to remotely control, or steer, cockroaches.
"Our aim was to determine whether we could create a wireless biological interface with cockroaches, which are robust and able to infiltrate small spaces," says Bozkurt, co-author of a paper on the work. "Ultimately, we think this will allow us to create a mobile web of smart sensors that uses cockroaches to collect and transmit information, such as finding survivors in a building that's been destroyed by an earthquake.
"Building small-scale robots that can perform in such uncertain, dynamic conditions is enormously difficult," Bozkurt says. "We decided to use biobotic cockroaches in place of robots, as designing robots at that scale is very challenging and cockroaches are experts at performing in such a hostile environment."
Researchers were able to precisely steer the roaches along a curved line.
Researchers were able to precisely steer the roaches along a curved line.
But you can't just put sensors on a cockroach. Researchers needed to find a cost-effective and electrically safe way to control the roaches, to ensure the roaches operate within defined parameters - such as a disaster site - and to steer the roaches to specific areas of interest.
The new technique developed by Bozkurt's team works by embedding a low-cost, light-weight, commercially-available chip with a wireless receiver and transmitter onto each roach (they used Madagascar hissing cockroaches). Weighing 0.7 grams, the cockroach backpack also contains a microcontroller that monitors the interface between the implanted electrodes and the tissue to avoid potential neural damage. The microcontroller is wired to the roach's antennae and cerci.
The cerci are sensory organs on the roach's abdomen, which are normally used to detect movement in the air that could indicate a predator is approaching - causing the roach to scurry away. But the researchers use the wires attached to the cerci to spur the roach into motion. The roach thinks something is sneaking up behind it and moves forward.
The wires attached to the antennae serve as electronic reins, injecting small charges into the roach's neural tissue. The charges trick the roach into thinking that the antennae are in contact with a physical barrier, which effectively steers them in the opposite direction.
In a recent experiment, the researchers were able to use the microcontroller to precisely steer the roaches along a line that curves in different directions. Here is video of the experiment:
The paper, "Line Following Terrestrial Insect Biobots," was presented Aug. 28 at the 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society in San Diego, Calif. The paper was authored by Tahmid Latif, a Ph.D. student at NC State, and co-authored by Bozkurt. Bozkurt has previously developed similar interfaces to steer moths, using implanted electronic backpacks.
Saturday, 29 June 2013
New Software Spots, Isolates Cyber-Attacks to Protect Networked Control Systems
Wente Zheng (L) & Dr. Mo-Yuen Chow (R)
Dr. Mo-Yuen Chow, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University and Wente Zheng, a Ph.D. student, have developed a software algorithm that detects and isolates cyber-attacks on networked control systems - which are used to coordinate transportation, power and other infrastructure across the United States.
Networked control systems are essentially pathways that connect and coordinate activities between computers and physical devices. For example, the systems that connect temperature sensors, heating systems and user controls in modern buildings are networked control systems.
But, on a much larger scale, these systems are also becoming increasingly important to national infrastructure, such as transportation and power. And, because they often rely on wireless or Internet connections, these systems are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. "Flame" and "Stuxnet" are examples of costly, high-profile attacks on networked control systems in recent years.
As networked control systems have grown increasingly large and complex, system designers have moved away from having system devices - or "agents" - coordinate their activities through a single, centralized computer hub, or brain. Instead, designers have created "distributed network control systems" (D-NCSs) that allow all of the system agents to work together, like a bunch of mini-brains, to coordinate their activities. This allows the systems to operate more efficiently. And now these distributed systems can also operate more securely.
NC State researchers have developed a software algorithm that can detect when an individual agent in a D-NCS has been compromised by a cyber-attack. The algorithm then isolates the compromised agent, protecting the rest of the system and allowing it to continue functioning normally. This gives D-NCSs resilience and security advantages over systems that rely on a central computer hub, because the centralized design means the entire system would be compromised if the central computer is hacked.
"In addition, our security algorithm can be incorporated directly into the code used to operate existing distributed control systems, with minor modifications," says Dr. Chow, co-author of a paper on the work. "It would not require a complete overhaul of existing systems."
"We have demonstrated that the system works, and are now moving forward with additional testing under various cyber-attack scenarios to optimize the algorithm's detection rate and system performance," says Wente Zeng, lead author of the paper.
The paper, "Convergence and Recovery Analysis of the Secure Distributed Control Methodology for D-NCS," will be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics, May 28-31, in Taipei, Taiwan. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
"Convergence and Recovery Analysis of the Secure Distributed Control Methodology for D-NCS"
Authors: Wente Zeng and Mo-Yuen Chow, North Carolina State University
Presented: May 28-31, IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics, Taipei, Taiwan
Abstract: Distributed control algorithms (e.g., consensus algorithm) are vulnerable to the misbehaving agent compromised by the cyber-attacks in Distributed Networked Control Systems (D-NCS). In this paper we continue our work on the proposed secure distributed control methodology that is capable of performing a secure consensus computation in D-NCS in the presence of misbehaving agents. The methodology is introduced first and proved to be effective through the convergence analysis. We then extend our secure distributed control methodology to the leaderless consensus network by introducing and adding two recovery schemes into the current secure distributed control framework to guarantee the accurate convergence in the presence of misbehaving agents. All phases in our method are distributed in the sense that at each step of the detection, mitigation, identification, update and recovery, every agent only uses local and one-hop neighbors' information. The simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Credit: Matt Shipman | NCSU News Services