A team of mechanical engineers at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, has developed a way to automate the process of merging live cockroaches and electronics to create cyborg cockroaches, greatly speeding up the process. In their study, available on the arXiv preprint server, the group taught a robot arm to connect electronics to living insects.

Prior research has shown that it is possible to connect electronics to live insects such as cockroaches to remotely control their behavior without hurting them. The technology is typically in the form of a small backpack containing communication and electrical processing, and probes that stimulate the insect. Stimulating the left antenna, for example, can cause a cockroach to turn left.