Robo Roach is born

摘要

A plastic cage in a lab in the heart of Tokyo is crawling with cockroaches. But these are not your average kitchen vermin—these are bionic roaches, their wings clipped off and replaced with miniature electronic circuits. Raphael Holzer, the Swiss researcher who helped to create them, picks one up by its electronic backpack. "That makes touching them not so bad," he confesses, just as the bug escapes and scuttles across the laboratory bench. Holzer grabs it and flings it back into the cage with its cell mates.