Fruit Fly Steers Robot
Swiss scientists have created what they call the Cyborg Fly. In this scheme, a fly is glued to a tether and placed in front of a mini movie screen. The screen plays a movie, and the fly thinks it is actually flying around obstacles. Meanwhile, a vision system tracks the wing motion of the fly and translates it into electronic commands which are sent to a little robot in an actual obstacle course.
This may all seem innocent enough, but the key here is that the fly believes it is flying around, interacting with the environment. Could they fool other animals too? How about humans? What if we are all actually just tethered into a virtual reality, while our robot representatives are the ones actually experiencing the real world?
Video: Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich/IEEE Spectrum/YouTube
