Bugged Code

Looking like a scene from Starship Troopers, insects swarm towards us across a barren desert. Although these are normal-sized Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) in a sand box, they have a secret in their backpacks which sounds like sci-fi. The insects are attached to microchips programmed to guide and coordinate a cyborg swarm. Inspired by “tourists who follow a tour leader”, algorithms steer the cockroach leader in the direction of a predefined goal with gentle bursts of electrical stimulation. With the cockroaches primed to follow their leader over and around obstacles, the approach could help to explore hazardous city areas during search and rescue missions, or even to plant seeds on a massive scale. But a different code might one day use remote controlled cyborg insects as tiny assistants in biomedical research – or even (gulp) to deliver drugs.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

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A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Clip from video from work by Yang Bai, Phuoc Thanh Tran Ngoc, and Huu Duoc Nguyen, and colleagues
• Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan; School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, Singapore
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, January 2025