document: Rats , robots , and rescue In early May , media inquiries started arriving at my office at the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue -LRB- www.crasar.org -RRB- . Because I 'm CRASAR 's director , I thought the press was calling to follow up on the recent humanitarian award given to the center 's founder , John Blitch , for successfully using small , backpackable robots at the World Trade Center disaster . Instead , I found they were asking me to comment on the `` roborats '' study in the 2 May 2002 Nature . In this study , rats with medial force brain implants underwent operant conditioning to force them into a form of guided behavior , one aspect of which was thought useful for search and rescue . The article 's closing comment suggested that a guided rat could serve as both a mobile robot and a biological sensor . Although a roboticist by training , I 'm committed to any technology that will help save lives while reducing the risk to rescuers . But rats ?
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