Small robots and drones have increasingly been used to help respond to disasters, reaching locations that are too hard or too dangerous to send humans, such as collapsed buildings. Many of these efforts have been focused on search and rescue. But new research shows how bugs—with their ability to crawl through even narrower gaps in rubbled—outfitted with electrodes could be used as the next generation of first responders.

A research team from the University of Queensland (UQ) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed the “Paraborg” to not only help with searching for victims, but also administer first aid. While the idea of receiving medical care from a cockroach might be a little skin-crawling, the new cyborg bug could one day help buy human rescuers valuable time in a disaster zone.

“Cyborg insects have been designed for ‘search and explore’ missions for the past couple of decades,” Tan Vo Doan, a bio-robotics researcher at UQ, says in a press release. “We wanted to take the next step.”

The team relied on a giant burrowing cockroach that inhabits northern Queensland to develop the Paraborg, which they documented in a recent paper published the journal Advanced Science. The armored cockroach is up to 87 millimeters (3.5 inches) in length and weighs up to 40 grams (1.4 ounces).

Taking advantage of this large size, the research team developed two types of Paraborgs with different functions: one equipped with a camera to film the condition of disaster victims, and another with an automatic injection mechanism to administer medication. Cockroaches can carry up to 1.5 times its body weight. In practice, a cockroach equipped with the injection mechanism saw its total height increase by about 15 millimeters and its weight by about 17 grams, which the study found did not significantly impair its normal movements. To create the cyborg cockroaches, the team anesthetized them when the electrodes and microchips were attached, and they lived as normal cockroaches once the equipment was removed...