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Analyzing the data, the CoTeSys researchers found that the fly constructs its understanding of the surroundings based on the speed at which objects whiz by. Now the next thing is to develop software that would allow a robot to accomplish exactly the same thing. Robots are notoriously poor at navigating their environment, and also the wherewithal to process camera data has severely limited the development of autonomous UAVs. So while it still seems unlikely that Microsoft Fly Flight Simulator go ahead many Christmas stockings this winter, this may be a substantial step towards creating autonomous, insect-sized flying robots.

60 minute flight simulator experience may well not look like nature's ace pilots when they're bumping against a closed window or getting squashed beneath a rolled-up copy with the New York Times Magazine, but a German company hopes to unravel the strategies of insect flight by tapping their brains. Literally.The business Cognition for Technical Systems (CoTeSys) has designed a flight simulator for flies. They hope that analyzing the fly's brain although it navigates a simulated flight path will provide the data necessary to design super-agile micro-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).The simulator (pictured below), shows a rapid succession of flashing patterns and moving shapes that mimic objects a fly may need to navigate. Electrodes monitor the brain waves with the fly, along with a computer process those brain signals into patterns understandable to the people without compound eyes. this expirment is actually vert worthwhile few people realize how complex flies are and how many of 1000s of nerves they've got because evolution means to compress them and give them an advatange in flight they even have neurons inside their thorax.Also i was reading that fruit fly can dream and also have a conscious but and have very similar brain waves humans(see douglas foxe's paper).Turns out flies are incredibly complex creatures far exceed the engenerring expertise and processing of our own personal technology I think it is very wise to research bilogical systems to assist in the creation of our Artificial ones.Flies will be the dumbest of creatures-- they cannot learn anything, should you position them through the same positive/ negative stimulus training a thousand times, they still will not figure out how to avoid any identifiable form or light pattern, something simple one-celled creatures can perform... yet flies are perfect survivors as a species. They obviously have no method of storing data, for short periods... otherwise they could learn SOMETHING... but they're awesome for quick response time and maneuverability. They're strictly stimulus-response mechanisms. I suspect researchers will discover that what few neurons flies have are all attached to the other person in the massive parallel system, making such behavior possible.