Autonomous Vibrational Analysis and Insect Behavioral Manipulation With Pied Piper

Abstract:

The legend of the Pied Piper describes a mysterious figure who plays a flute to lure nuisance mice out of a village. Vibrational analysis and manipulation of insect sound provides powerful methods to observe insect populations. Mechanisms have also been discovered and applied to control insect behavior using these sounds. The OPEnS Lab Pied Piper system brings together detection and recognition of unique insect mating calls into an automated system to listen for, attract, and capture insects present on a substrate. By listening to vibrations propagated through a grapevine, the Pied Piper can detect the presence of specific kinds of insects and mimic the matching mating call of that species, drawing the insect in towards an attached trap. The Pied Piper system is separated into two main components: detection and attraction. The detection portion consists of a contact microphone and an audio conditioning IC which allows the user to tweak values such as gain, noise floor, and compression ratios on the fly to match the conditions of the substrate or insect species. The detection algorithm analyzes the magnitude and frequency spectra of all vibrations present in the substrate to develop a profile of the incoming vibrations and then compares it to the sound profile of a specific insect to determine a match. In the autonomous mode, after detecting a match the Pied Piper will play a matching call specific to the detected insect to draw the insect into an attached trap. A single Pied Piper unit is designed to operate in an outdoor environment and costs ~$300 USD. Follow the project at http://www.open-sensing.org/projects