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Like a silent bionic army, the era of the cyborg has crept upon us. Or so a group of reviewers said recently when they evaluated where the science of cyborgs has led.

Is this era one of super-powered, tech-enhanced humans? If you look at it through one lens, yestoday we have medical enhancements that would, a few years ago, have sent sci-fi enthusiasts into a geeked out tailspin.

But another look reveals the subtler reality: a more incremental cyborg science, played out in the bodies of bugs.

The past few years have been saturated with stories about cyborg insects. We've heard about cockroaches turned into fuel cells, moths whose flight patterns we can control with implanted wires, and flying insects employable as airborne spies. Cool? Yes. Creepy? Yes. But do these bionic bugs offer a glimpse of a future that might be in store for humans as well?

Consider that wiring up the brain of an insect can build understanding of how electronic chips embedded in human brains can help remedy Parkinson's disease. Of course, there are ethical concerns to add to the mix: is it fair to strip independence from any living thing, even a bug, by turning it into a machine? Or on the other hand, does this robo-bug revolution in fact signal something positive about the way humans might value the long-despised critters?

"Recent developments combining machines and organisms have great potential, but also give rise to major ethical concerns," reads the press release from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which published the review about cyborgs.

These concerns are naturally larger when it comes to human bodies, because in the future, an enhanced ability to channel signals into a human brain might have complex, if not questionable outcomes. Insects on the other handphysically simple, easily attainable, and 'just bugs' after allprovide perfect vessels for our experiments.

Alper Bozkurt, an electrical and computer engineering researcher at North Carolina State University, is part of a team that wires cockroaches up to tiny wearable radio backpacks, allowing the researchers to transmit small pulses of electricity by remote-control via the backpack and into the cockroach's antennae. This triggers the nerves there, prompting the insect to change direction. "The cockroaches use their antennae like a blind person," says Bozkurt, "So we think this pulse creates the sense of a barrier."

"IT'S NOT LIKE YOU KNOW THE PATH BETWEEN YOU AND THE VICTIM," BOZKURT SAYSUNLESS YOU HAVE A SCURRYING ARMY OF CYBORG INSECTS TO MAP IT FOR YOU, OF COURSE

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Welcome to the Age of the Bionic Superbug