This is the best summary I could come up with:

Built by engineers in Texas, the robotic insect fuses a live cockroach with a miniature computer that is wired into the animal’s nervous system.

Hong Liang, who led the research at Texas A&M University, said the controllable insect could carry tiny video cameras, microphones and other sensors.

With those on board, it could gather information from places where humans would rather not be: collapsed buildings, broken sewers, and the kitchens in student house shares.

They can go into small places, sense the environment, and if there’s movement, from a predator say, they can escape much better than a system designed by a human,” Liang told the Guardian.

Each backpack contained a computer chip that could send signals down a pair of fine wires into nerves that controlled legs on either side of the cockroach.

Roy Ritzmann who studies how insects climb over, tunnel under, and go around objects, at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said that if cockroaches can be controlled for long periods, they could yet prove useful.

The original article contains 783 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

this is so old you can actually buy a kit to do it yourself