Don’t be surprised if you see a robotic cockroach doing some rescue works around a collapsed building because such a roach bot is going to be the future hero for trapped people. The unique invention is brainchild of UC Berkeley researchers.

The new cockroach robot is capable of running through tiny spaces in collapsed buildings, and that too at blazing speeds, as per the researchers. The roach bot has been designed with an aim to use it as search-and-rescue robobugs in buildings collapsed in disasters. The tiny robot can also help scientists understand the role of animals in soft robotics.

The UC Berkeley researchers described their invention in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Robert Full, a biomechanist at the university and an author of the study, said that he and his team studied animals’ movement for a long time. He explored how geckos stick to walls, but he got inspired when he saw insects running through tunnels at a very high speed.

“Animals with exoskeletons like cockroaches can go everywhere, and infest any space, so we wondered, well, how did they do that? So we constructed a series of tight crevices to see what they could do”, Full explained.

For the study, the researchers took some American cockroaches, Periplaneta americana. They are very common type of cockroaches that people think they don’t have in their homes, but they do, Full continued. During the study, the insects ran through a tunnel 12 millimeters high. After that, the tunnel’s height was reduced to 9 millimeters and then to 6 millimeters, and at last to 4 millimeters.

The researchers noted that the cockroaches maintained their high speed until they were made to move through the tightest tunnel.