3D-Printed Suit Lets Cyborg Cockroaches Dive Underwater

Cockroaches are usually the last creatures anyone wants to encounter. But researchers at Nanyang Technological University and Waseda University have turned them into unlikely rescue tools, fitting living insects with 3D-printed underwater suits that let them navigate flooded environments.

It sounds like the plot of a science fiction film. It’s actually the premise of a study published in Nature Communications: remote-controlled cyborg insects that can move between land and water and stay active for hours at a time, in confined, extreme environments where humans and conventional robots struggle.

Rather than build a robot to mimic a cockroach, the researchers took the living insect and wired it up instead. Pairing an animal with an electronic controller is what’s known as a cyborg insect, a hybrid that uses the body nature already built rather than trying to copy it. Using Madagascar hissing cockroaches, the team combined the insects’ natural abilities with an existing control backpack and a newly designed 3D-printed breathing system, giving them amphibious capabilities.