Hertz is most interested in how the cockroach does not act like a computer chip, how its behavior defies easy logic. Watching the roachbot cruise along at slow walking speed, stumbling and bumping into things, it’s impossible not to wonder about the underlying neural processes, which propagate through a distributed set of ganglia rather than a central brain. On another level, the robot system is meant to be funny, but some also see it as a dark reduction of human-machine interaction. Following this theme, Hertz’s paper describing the project,

“Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine,” takes its name from the subtitle of

Norbert Wiener’s seminal 1948 book, Cybernetics.

Hertz first demonstrated his roachmobile at last year’s SIGGRAPH, where it milled around the audience during the conference’s popular wearable-computing fashion show. At this year’s SIGGRAPH, however, Hertz feels that his state-of-the-art roach couture may be ready for the runway.

—Paul Spinrad

>>Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine: conceptlab.com/control