An international team of scientists recently unveiled "RoboRoach," a robotic cockroach (above).

The purpose of the exercise?

To study "collective intelligence."

Roaches, ants, bees and many other creatures are gregarious and share a kind of mob intellect, said Dr. José Halloy, senior research scientist at the Free University of Brussels.

The researchers have found a chemical blend that smells "roach-ish" enough for the imposters to trick real roaches into believing they are part of the group, and even to modify roach group behavior by getting them (the real roaches) to follow them from dark to light places, a very impressive accomplishment.

The scientists say they are also making progress with chickens, which exhibit a destructive "panic behavior" that might be calmed with poultrybots.

"That's the dream," Dr. Halloy said.

"But, of course, we are far away from that."

Dr. Eric Bonabeau, a member of the consortium working on the project, is also chairman of Icosystem, a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Paris, that is exploring swarm technology "for military purposes."

The link above has great slide shows and videos of the RoboRoaches strutting their stuff.

[via John Schwartz and the New York Times]