Michigan company Backyard Brains design RoboRoach which can be controlled via smartphone Roboroach is on everyone's Christmas lists right? Picture: Screengrab/Kickstarter Source: Supplied THIS is a toy set to bug most of us, but one company hopes kids and tech heads everywhere will be buzzing over RoboRoach. Michigan company Backyard Brains has developed what is calls "the world's first commercially available cyborg" and it involves playing with live cockroaches. If that's not enough to turn you squeamish, this might. To get your cyborg into action, you first cut a live cockroach and then implant electrodes to control the insects' movements using your smartphone. It's enough to give you the creepy crawlies, right? Maybe not because the company has already attracted $12,339 which it has raised from 83 backers so some people must dig it. On its website, Backyard Brains says RoboRoach is not a gimmick but "part cockroach and part machine: and 'just good ol' fashion neuroscience, evolution and engineering." Right because we all love playing with insects that live in our bins. New Croaky, Creepy Critters Exhibit opens at the Werribee Open Range Zoo Giant Burrowing Cockroache Source: News Limited The start-up company of scientists and engineers say it wants to change the way students are taught neuroscience and engineering and "create opportunities for students of all ages to engage in hands on, inquiry based learning." Unfortunately animal rights group PETA are failing to see the benefit of what it has called a "bully starter kit." The group issued a statement over the RoboRoach, urging people not to buy it because cockroaches have feelings and such devices encourage people to be cruel. "Not only is a Michigan-based company called Backyard Brains encouraging kids to torture bugs, it's also upping the ante by selling kits that turn bullying into a hi-tech experiment," the statement says. It adds cockroaches experience pain and also have complex memory, learning, and spatial awareness. PETA says it has submitted a complaint to the Michigan attorney general and the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs about the unauthorised practice of veterinary medicine (performing surgery on cockroaches) which is considered a felony.