Watch as creepy Frankenstein cyborg cockroaches come to life & are CONTROLLED by humans through high-tech backpacks

THIS is the bizarre moment that creepy Frankenstein-style cyborg cockroaches come to life and form an army of bugs.

A University of Queensland student in Australia, Lachlan Fitzgerald, fires up their tiny circuit board backpacks on the animals to create the controllable critters.

The freaky footage shows the agile cockroaches crawl slowly over blades of grass, their miniature legs clambering through the bumpy terrain.

The backpack-like device sends electrical pulses to its antennae, allowing Lachlan to control their movements.

The tech wizard can tap into the bug's natural agility to create a crew of machine search and rescue workers, part-living, part-machine.

Lachlan said: “We see a future where after an urban disaster like an earthquake or a bombing, where humans can’t safely access the disaster site, being able to send in a bunch of cyborg beetles to navigate the disaster zone quickly and efficiently.

“Insects are so adaptable compared to an artificial robotic system, which has to perform so much computation to be able to deal with all these different scenarios that might get thrown at it in the real world.

“Only when it leaves the desired path that we want it to be on do we intervene and tell it to actually go this way instead of the way it was actually heading."

The hope is that these machines will be able to help locate survivors in disaster situations and deliver lifesaving drugs to them.

Experts are currently trying to refine the work before they are used in any practical sense.

This could take a long time, but before long these tiny cockroaches could be saving lives.

Lachlan said that beetles that have had backpacks attached to them have normal life expectancies.

He continued: “So I don’t think they mind, per se.

“The science is out on whether or not they’re actually conscious beings.

“I think the potential for this technology to save lives in an urban disaster, it really outweighs any kind of hesitancy you might have towards the field.”

Burrowing cockroaches are a species native to Australia and can grow up to 3inches.

They can be found in a variety of environments, from tropical savannas to deserts across the world.

A SWARM OF SINGAPORE SAVIOURS

The Sun reported on the development of cyborg cockroaches back in April.

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore demonstrated how they could command and direct the creatures.

They said at the time: "Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have demonstrated how they could command and direct the creatures.

"This is due to the inherent limitations of traditional robots in collision avoidance, adaptation to unknown environments, and sustained energy efficiency.

"In order to overcome these limitations, this research proposes a solution by integrating living insects with miniature electronic controllers to enable robotic-like programmable control, and proposing a novel control algorithm for swarming.

"Although these creatures, called cyborg insects, have the ability to instinctively avoid collisions with neighbors and obstacles while adapting to complex terrains, there is a lack of literature on the control of multi-cyborg systems."

They tested out their design by mounting tiny computers onto each of the 20 critters in Madagascar.

Scientists then controlled the swarm simultaneously and made it move up a sandy slope.

It was found that one cockroach would become the leader of the group.

The cockroaches are still said to be able to overpower the commands and choose their own way around an obstacle.