The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a microrobotics platform

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Iwasaki, Kenichi; Neuhauser, Charles; Stokes, Chris; Rayshubskiy, Aleksandr
• 署名单位: Harvard University; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-12927
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2426180122
• 发表日期: 2025-04-15
• 关键词: motor control; drosophila; circuits; BEHAVIOR; flight

摘要

Engineering small autonomous agents capable of operating in the microscale environment remains a key challenge, with current systems still evolving. Our study explores the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, a classic model system in biology and a species adept at microscale interaction, as a biological platform for microrobotics. Initially, we focus on remotely directing the walking paths of fruit flies in an experimental arena. We accomplish this through two distinct approaches: harnessing the fruit flies' optomotor response and optogenetic modulation of its olfactory system. These techniques facilitate reliable and repeated guidance of flies between arbitrary spatial locations. We guide flies along predetermined trajectories, enabling them to scribe patterns resembling textual characters through their locomotion. We enhance olfactory- guided navigation through additional optogenetic to collective behaviors in shared spaces and navigation through constrained maze- like environments. We further use our guidance technique to enable flies to carry a load across designated points in space, establishing the upper bound on their weight- carrying capabilities. Additionally, we demonstrate that visual guidance can facilitate novel interactions between flies and objects, showing that flies can consistently relocate a small spherical microrobotics, these behavioral contexts can provide insights into the neurological basis of behavior in fruit flies.