A team of engineers from Washington University in St. Louis is looking to capitalize on the sense of smell in locusts to create new biorobotic sensing systems that could be used in homeland security applications.
Baranidharan Raman, associate professor of biomedical engineering, has received a three-year, $750,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to use the highly sensitive locust olfactory system as the basis to develop a bio-hybrid nose. Joining Raman in the research areSrikanth Singamaneni, associate professor of materials science, and Shantanu Chakrabartty, professor of computer science & engineering, all in the School of Engineering & Applied Science.