Every few years, cockroaches find themselves conscripted into humanity’s ongoing endeavours to build proper cyborgs—and this example from Instructables may be the cheapest venture yet. A user calling themselves bravoechonovember1 recently released guidelines on how to control a roach with an Arduino for under £30 ($30), a figure that doesn’t appear to include the cost of acquiring said insects first.
Nitpicking aside, the process itself seems relatively simple if rather gruesome. The first step is to assemble a “backpack,” which consists of sheet aluminium cut into a rectangular shape, pin connectors, and wires. Then comes the actual surgical procedure.
You’ll need to anaesthetise your cockroach by submerging it into ice water before sanding down the top of its thorax (the bit between its neck and abdomen), attaching your Arduino, and trimming the antennae so you can insert wires into the hollows. Finally, and perhaps most disconcertingly, you’ll have to insert another wire into the creature’s thorax, by means of first creating a perforation with a pin. Ouch.
Once you’re done with that and programming the Arduino (it requires about six lines of code; nothing too arduous at all), you’ll be able to take your roach out for a test drive. The hack works by stimulating the cockroach’s antennae with variable frequencies, causing it to believe that there is a wall ahead. However, braveechonovember1 notes your cockroach will eventually cease responding to stimuli and go its own way, likely because biological life is susceptible to desensitisation.
As mentioned earlier, the idea of “cyborg cockroaches” isn’t new. The most prominent example, perhaps, is Backyard Brains’ RoboRoach (successful) crowdfunding campaign. Similar to bravoechonovember1’s version, it involves slicing off the antennae from a cockroach and cramming them with electrodes, allowing users to steer the bug about. But the idea came under minor fire due to questions of whether such a procedure could be construed as humane. As Wired UK pointed out, it’s somewhat cruel to subject the insects to the ministrations of 10-year-old kids or social media's frenzied amusement. Still, it's a cool introduction to both neuroscience and the nascent art of biohacking.