Tiny camera backpacks were mounted on live beetles as part of a new study out of the US.
The wireless camera streams video to a smartphone and can rotate 60 degrees on a pivot arm, giving an insect-eye view of the world.
It weighs just 250 milligrams - around one-tenth the weight of a playing card.
The camera backpacks were attached to a death-feigning beetle and a pinacate beetle in the study by the University of Washington.
They can be controlled by a smartphone more than 100 metres away with Bluetooth.
And it didn't harm the bugs; the researchers say they lived for over a year after their experiment ended.
"We made sure the beetles could still move properly when they were carrying our system," said co-lead author Ali Najafi.
"They were able to navigate freely across gravel, up a slope and even climb trees."
More than just mounting on actual insects, like the beetles used in the study, the researchers say it'll be able to work on little insect-sized robots.
As for why they did it? Co-author Vikram Iyer says there are many opportunities.
"This is the first time that we've had a first-person view from the back of a beetle while it's walking around," he said.
"There are so many questions you could explore, such as how does the beetle respond to different stimuli that it sees in the environment?
"But also, insects can traverse rocky environments, which is really challenging for robots to do at this scale. So this system can also help us out by letting us see or collect samples from hard-to-navigate spaces."
The study was published in the journal Science Robotics today and was funded by a Microsoft fellowship and the US National Science Foundation.
SHARE ME