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Why might you want a cyborg cockroach army in your house?

Answer: To help complete tasks.

Closeup of a cockroach on a peice of wood.
Red-yellow cockroach on wood
An army of small robots that could respond to your command could be very helpful around the house: They could bring you things, help you clean and do chores, or even keep an eye on your home while you’re away thanks to built-in cameras. But tiny robots are difficult to create, particularly when it comes to how to power them (we just haven’t invented small enough batteries yet). But Digital Nature Group at the University of Tsukuba in Japan has come up with a solution that involves nature.

They thought: Instead of building an army of tiny robots from scratch, why not just turn the insects that already live in your house into one? Thus we have the cyborg cockroach. The team fitted the incredibly resilient (and very creepy, in the opinion of many) cockroach with cybernetic implants that would allow a user to control their movements by stimulating their right or left antennae. This simply makes the roach think it has hit an object and so it turns around.  

The cockroaches were also fitted with fiducial markers and an overhead camera system, as well as wireless connectivity so all the tech can be operated remotely. A group of these roach cyborgs could be used for a number of tasks including transporting objects, drawing or writing messages, or even creating a digital display by turning each individual insect into a pixel. And the best (and also creepiest) part is that they can feed themselves and be completely independent when you don’t need them, hiding under the floorboards and being normal cockroaches until you activate the swarm.