Remote-controlled cockroaches with infrared cameras can now operate underwater for three hours, thanks to a custom 3D-printed oxygen suit developed in Singapore.
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University, led by Hirotaka Sato, have been wiring cockroaches with IR cameras and wireless controls for disaster search-and-rescue work. After demonstrating a coordinated swarm in 2024, the team identified a gap: the insects couldn't cross water. The fix is a bespoke scuba suit — a 3D-printed shell with tubes feeding oxygen from a sponge-based tank into the cockroach's spiracles, using a slow hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide reaction to avoid heavy pressurized gear. In tests, the roaches held up at 50 cm depth for three hours, slowing only slightly from 8.75 cm per second on land to 7.84 cm per second submerged.
This matters because energy is the wall every micro-robotics team hits. Battery-powered miniature robots need recharging; a cockroach needs a meal every few weeks and self-heals wounds. The biological chassis solves power and durability problems that silicon and lithium can't, at least not yet at this scale.
Two decades after DARPA's HI-MEMS program first proved the concept of cyborg insects, the gap between proof-of-concept and operational tool is narrowing. Sato's team is already eyeing harsher environments — including Mars — which reads partly as a grant pitch but is less absurd than it sounds: cockroaches tolerate radiation, low oxygen, and high CO2 at levels that would kill a human. The more immediate question is whether regulators and rescue agencies will ever sign off on deploying living insects as surveillance hardware.