The Agricultural Research Service needs a locomotion compensator for insects. In plain English, it is a system that lets a very small creature keep walking while a camera and software record where it is trying to go—the laboratory equivalent of a spherical treadmill for bugs.
The system is intended for insects between one and ten millimeters long. Its components include a sphere unit, a control unit, a CMOS video camera and analysis software. Together they keep the subject in view while turning its movement into measurements that can be compared and studied.
Researchers in Columbia, Missouri, plan to use the equipment to build a more objective way to quantify insect movement. The immediate scientific goal is to evaluate compounds designed to interfere with an insect's chemosensory system—the machinery it uses to detect chemical signals in its environment.
That makes the device part camera rig, part behavioral arena and part exceptionally tiny gym equipment. The comedy comes from scale: a federal acquisition devoted to tracking the footsteps of something barely larger than a grain of rice. The usefulness comes from precision. If a chemical changes where or how an insect moves, the system can turn that response into data.
The request is an unrestricted commercial-item purchase rather than a small-business set-aside. Quotations were requested under solicitation 1232SA26Q0806, with a response deadline of August 27, 2026. Somewhere inside those ordinary procurement mechanics is an unusual assignment: build a better record of where a bug thinks it is going.