Explosives detection: will grasshoppers soon replace sniffer dogs?

The University of Washington on behalf of the United States military is working on a system of detection of explosives by locusts. The dogs would therefore be replaced by swarms of locusts which would melt directly on the suspect packages. Their antennas have an incredible ability to distinguish chemical particles in the air. They are even more precise than a dog's nose. So rather than training them, researchers have installed a mini-headset on their heads that collects the signal from their antennas before transmitting it to a computer.

Grasshoppers are ravaging crops in East Africa, but they could also save lives. We managed to transform them into explosives detectors.

In this way, we would no longer endanger the dogs, we would replace them with swarms of locusts which would melt directly on the suspect packages.
You should know that their antennas have an incredible ability to distinguish chemical particles in the air. They are even more precise than a dog's nose. So rather than training them, researchers have installed a mini-headset on their heads that collects the signal from their antennas before transmitting it to a computer.
They used this technique to detect explosives with incredible precision. Much better than any human-made sensor.

Can they control them? Because they could go anywhere the locusts.

Yes, this is the second step. At first, they installed them in small remote-controlled cars. Now they're really trying to control them like drones with little pulses on the abdomen. This will transform them into species of cyborgs, half-robot, half-insect. Which would be very interesting for anti-personnel mines. We could finally spot them from a distance.

Is it theoretical or are we really going to use remote controlled locusts as explosives detectors?

No, it's very serious. This is work by the University of Washington on behalf of the United States military. They have been working there for four years. So we should not be surprised to see one day beetle patrols, with helmets and backpacks, which criss-cross airports looking for terrorists.