This is both innovative and disturbing: Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore have developed a way to enslave cockroaches by turning them into cyborgs. These are used in humanitarian aid missions, like searching through rubble for survivors, where it would be desirable to command a small army of robots. By electronically enslaving the cockroaches, it saves the trouble of needing to produce said robots.

Led by Professor Hirotaka Sato from NTU's School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the team starts with captured, live Madagascar hissing cockroaches. These are among the largest species of cockroach on Earth, reaching up to 3" in length.

Image: Eelek0, CC BY-SA 4.0

The cockroaches are anesthetized, then held in place by a bracket as a tiny microcontroller—an "electronic backpack"--is surgically attached, with electrodes implanted into the cockroach.

This microcontroller then sends electrical stimulation into the roach, manipulating it into walking. The researchers can make the roach walk, turn, speed up and slow down. The roaches are alive the entire time.

The entire surgical procedure is automated, and the team refers to the rig they built as "the world's first automated cyborg insect 'factory line.'" It can "process" four roaches in under eight minutes. (Prior to this, the "backpacks" were attached manually and took over an hour.)

After testing their controlled cockroaches in an obstacle course, earlier this year the research team sent ten of the cyborg-bugs to Myanmar with the Singapore Civil Defence Force. The roaches were used to search for survivors following Myanmar's 7.7 magnitude earthquake.

The field deployment demonstrated the potential of insect-based robotics for locating survivors in disaster-hit areas where conventional robots would have struggled with access and short operational times.

"With learning from our field deployment, it's now essential to create infrastructure that supports mass production and deployment," said Prof Sato. "Our assembly line is the first step towards that goal, and we believe it will pave the way for more reliable cyborg applications, such as inspecting large civil structures for defects."

The researchers say that the "backpacks" can be removed from the roaches with no ill effect on them. But what bugs me about this, pun intended, is that the insects are living creatures that don't have any choice in the matter. And it's not difficult to imagine scaling this system up to control larger creatures.