The roach has a 20-minute battery life, and according to Sputnik, "The robot can carry up to a 10-gram payload making it of interest to the military, as a miniature robot with a portable camera can penetrate into hard-to-reach places."

It's certainly an impressive machine, but it's hard to imagine it was designed from scratch (well, with a head start from nature) and built entirely in 7 months. We've seen round backs on robotic roaches in research from the University of California at Berkeley. Other projects have put remote controls onto the backs of living roaches, and made kits for Kickstarter backers to do the same. Scientists have even launched robot birds from fast-sprinting robot roaches.

None of this is to diminish the work done by the team that built Blaberus, which you can see in action below: (Go to Story for Video)