This very much could be real.

Experiments have shown before that simple insects have very simple responses to detecting light in different directions. Shine a light in one eye, they go left. Shine a light in the other eye, they go right. Shine a light in both eyes, they go straight forward.

It would be fairly simple to glue a couple tiny LEDs to the insect’s eyes and wire them up to a tiny microcontroller and radio receiver. And voila – remote control roach.

Probably not super reliable in the controls and doesn’t always go exactly where you want it … but it should do a decent job of going in the general direction you tell it to.