Roboach

Cease your wondering! Tiny robots programmed to act like roaches can blend into cockroach society!

Cockroaches tend to self-organize into leaderless groups, seeming to reach consensus on where to rest together. For example, when provided two similar shelters, most of the group tended to gather under the same one. Researchers from the Free University of Brussels designed small robots programmed to act like a cockroach, hoping to learn more about this behavior.

The robots didn't look like the insects, and at first the roaches fled from them, but after the scientists coated the robots with pheromones that made them smell like roaches the machines were accepted into the group, nesting together with the insects.

Given a choice, roaches generally prefer a darker place and the robots were programmed to do the same. When given a choice of a darker or lighter shelter, 75%of the cockroaches and 85% of the robots gathered under the darker one. Then, to see if the robots had really become part of society and could influence group decisions, they were programmed to prefer shelters with more light.

The result? The lighter shelter was preferred by the mixed group 61% of the time, while the cockroaches alone picked it just 27% of the time. On the other hand, in 39% of cases the robots, despite being programmed to prefer a lighter shelter, joined the cockroaches under the darker one.

This is huge news for the cockroach robotics industry. Of course, the marketing community may also be interested in using some combination of pest and robot to help manipulate sales, and there could be a great future applying the same technology to fraternity boys and sorority girls, who seem to be human versions of the insect.