This is wicked cool. Belgian robotocists have developed a robotic cockroach that real biological roaches accept and interact with. The RR has been able to subsume group behaviour and get the roaches to 'nest' in lighted areas instead of dark ones.

"The robots were programmed to act similar to live roaches. They thus had two occasionally conflicting imperatives for behavior.

1) seek appropriate shelter,

and 2) remain near other roaches. So a robot roach wouldn't simply move to a brightly-lit shelter...it might gravitate towards it, but only if other (live) roaches followed it. In some cases, the robot was able to change the decision of the entire herd. In others, the behavior of the live roaches overrode its shelter-seeking imperative."

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Robotic insect intelligence might come in handy for autonomous exploration of the solar system.