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.
