Roaches think they're so smart, what with all the running, hiding, reproducing, and possibly surviving a nuclear war. It may be that they have exoskeletons on their backs durable enough to outlast the human race, but when it comes to the mental department, these little critters don't have much to be proud of. Human beings behind Project Leurre under the European Commission's Future and Emerging Technologies still reign supreme, creating a robotic model that would interact with and manipulate what little brain there is in these simpletons.

The insbot is a thumbnail-sized robot to the naked human eye, but to the cockroaches, it is an attractive peer, fragrant with aromatic roach pheromones. The familiar smell takes away any suspicion that a spy is among the real roaches, or that a predator is out to get them. The insbot gains their trust, and they possibly take him barhopping.

The insbots mimic roach behavior. They can navigate through experimental mazes, turning and stopping, avoiding obstacles and each other. They can also huddle around light or line up. Together, they can penetrate groups of roaches and pass off as part of them, capitalizing on a very interesting aspect of roach behavior that is collective intelligence. Like ants, a group of roaches tend to be influenced by an individual roach, and vice versa. In the same way, the natural agents - or real roaches - influence the artificial ones - the insbots.

Jean-Louis Deneubourg from the Universit? Libre de Bruxelles explains: "In our project, the autonomous insbots call on especially developed algorithms to react to signals and responses from individual insects. This results in a chain action or reaction between the artificial and natural agents - a two-way interaction that is unique and very promising for sciences such as biology and robotics."

What the natural agents don't know is that the insbots are equipped with motors, wheels, rechargeable battery, computer processors, light-sensing camera, and infrared proximity sensors. These insbots are as savvy and deadly as your next James Bond movie. They can affect the behavior of the real roaches.

One example of this is illustrated when artificial roaches convince the real ones into the light, as opposed to natural roach behavior of staying in the dark. Exposing these stealthy insects could lead to their death (hurrah for pest controllers) or their being extensively studied (hurrah for scientists). The implications of this project could extend to the manipulation of the behavior of chickens and sheep (hurrah for farmers).