Dead fruit fly brain with 166,700 neurons gets robotic body and starts chasing flies again
algo_diver · x · 2026-09-19
A lab has mounted a complete fruit fly connectome — 166,700 neurons and over 25 million biological connections — inside a robot body that closely resembles the original insect.
After wiring the brain to cameras, wings, and motors, the team wrote no explicit flight behaviors; the system learned what the signals meant on its own. It turns its head toward moving lights, corrects its wings against airflow changes, and starts following another fly that crosses its camera.
The striking part is how little machinery the brain needs before old instincts become useful again: hundreds of millions of years of evolved neural circuitry, given a metal body, is still trying to fly.
Related event: Fruit Fly Brain Uploaded to Robot Drives Autonomous Behavior(2 posts)→
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