A first generation version of the backpack guidance system that includes energy harvesting, navigation and optical stimulation on a to-scale model of a dragonfly. Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

Using electricity for this task is too crude, however. "The problem is if you draw a tiny current into the nerve core, you would activate all the nerves around it," Wheeler says, adding that light activation would provide more specificity.

Draper partnered with Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers, who are genetically modifying dragonflies' steering neurons to make them sensitive to light. The insects can then be strapped with a Draper-designed backpack that delivers targeted light pulses to specific steering neurons. The backpack also contains a navigation system, sensors, wireless transmitters, and miniature solar panels.

Instead of manually controlling the insects, the team could theoretically program a dragonfly (via the backpack) to do certain tasks, such as investigating a building in a warzone, which it will carry out autonomously. Wheeler thinks the system may be ready for real-world tests in about two years.

Bozkurt suggests biobots are just a stepping stone to miniaturized insect-like robots, which aren't yet possible due to technological limitations. "If you look at the history of science, before having our automobiles we were riding various beasts of burden," he says, explaining that biobots are modern science's beasts of burden.

But Liang thinks there are benefits to keeping robot-like insects around. They're more inexpensive and energy-efficient than full robots, she says, and have the ability to sense the environment on their own and respond in kind, such by evading unstable rubble or escaping from guard dogs or other dangers during espionage missions.

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Some insects, such as locusts and bees, can also be trained to home in on certain scents, including the chemical cues of explosives. The insects could eventually be remotely

Liang suggests there may be other, more science fiction-like uses to the cyborgs not necessarily possible with full robots. For instance, if your home is infested with roaches, you could release a robo-roach to find their main hiding spaces. The roach, perhaps outfitted with attractive chemical cues, could then be guided outside of your home, luring the other roaches out in a kind of Pied Piper fashion. "This is a crazy idea, but I think it will be possible," she says.

Compared with machines, cyborg insects are "more versatile and flexible, and they require less control," Liang says. "They're more real."

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