Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
The cockroach has been around for about 320 million years, or long enough for cavemen to be disgusted by them. They’re also adaptive enough that they can survive a nuclear war, a month without food, or you screaming at them when you turn on the lights at 2 am.
Modern civilization has been trying to get rid of the pests forever – except for some scientists, who have decided to make an army of cyborg roaches, as if 2025 wasn’t already enough of a trainwreck so far.
Domo Arigato Mr. Roachboto. (Dimitǎr Boevski/Creative Commons)
Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University has built an assembly line to churn out the cockroach of the future, as if the ones from the past and present weren’t persistent enough. The system doesn’t make the roaches; rather, it affixes a tiny robotic backpack to the insects, usually a Madagascar hissing cockroach that’s been anesthetized, which really gives them something to hiss about once they come to.
The backpack contains remotely controlled electrodes that stimulate body parts on the roach, like its antenna and eyes, which can control the movement of the roach. The outside of the backpack probably has tiny patches of the insects’ favorite band, usually Garbage or Papa Roach.
The assembly line contains a platform that holds the roach in place, pulls back a section of its cuticle, then lowers a 2.3-gram backpack onto it, with electrodes planted into the exposed area. Then it’s released while still anesthetized, likely embarrassing the living daylights out of it when its friends and family ask what the hell happened to it last night and where it got that thing on its back from.
The “assembly line” vastly speeds up the process of churning out these nightmare machines, with the whole process taking just 68 seconds per vermin. That would take 15 minutes to an hour if done by hand, and that’s not even counting breaks to catch the roach or to vomit.
One might wonder what the practical applications of robo-roaches would be, other than the inspiration for a new horror film franchise. However, the main use could potentially be to search for survivors in disaster sites, as an army of roaches equipped with cameras on their backpacks could squeeze into spaces and potentially find survivors in places we can’t fit.
This cockroach is apparently paid just 25 cents for a hard day's work. (Eric Whitmire/North Carolina State University)
That sounds great, except for anyone whose top two fears are 1) a building collapsing on them and being caught in the rubble, and 2) roaches. Imagine if you’ve been calling out for help, and instead, a bunch of gross roaches with cameras on them find you and start hissing. Also, if all of them have cameras, there’s probably going to be at least a handful of them giving beauty and makeup tips instead of saving humans.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
