What could be the connection between a robot and a cockroach? A common answer would be that there is no relation between those hideous crawlers and the smooth pieces of high technology. Maybe in a sci-fi scenario cockroaches could meat robots.

But now the technology comes closer and closer to science-fiction. Part of our daily reality was just fantasy 20 years ago; we travel faster, we use Bluetooth and we entertain ourselves by surfing the virtual world called the Internet. So, although until now no one though of creating a cockroach-like robot, this extraordinary moment has came. A team of scientists created a tiny robot that went undercover and joined a clan of real cockroaches.

Led by Jose Halloy of the University of Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, a team of European researchers not only created some amazing cockroach-sized robots, but they also sent them to interact with their living counterparts. And surprisingly or not, the robots and the cockroaches befriended. The real cockroaches even let the robots influence their behavior, although the robots had taken a bad decision. They all chose to hide under the same shelter, although there was too much light for the common cockroaches to like it. One should mention that the tiny robots had an important secret: they were wearing a special cockroach perfume, which seems to have been the secret formula that did the trick.

The study was published in this week’s issue of the journal “Science” and it represents a major step for both robotics and biology. It showed that the scientists could one day be able to better understand how the creatures take collective decisions. It also proved that the tech tools got sharper and sharper.