Artist Garnet Hertz has equipped his cockroatches with robotic vehicles. The roach uses a ping-pong ball as a mouse wheel for steering. They seem to navigate around obstacles just fine most of the time, but "roaches aren't the most predictable bugs".
As with technology so often, this experiment has philosophical implications. Accoring to Mr. Repetto of Columbia University, while robotics has always been about amplifying human ability, Hertz's device "gives roaches skills they wouldn't normally have, which brings up all sorts of questions, including many about responsibility and consciousness".
