Communications of the ACM
How Maggots Are Influencing the Future of Robotics
The learning processes of maggots "could have important applications for technology," says Barbara Webb, coordinator of the European Union-funded MINIMAL project.
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The European Union-funded MINIMAL project is concentrating on the learning processes of the fruit fly larva, which project coordinator Barbara Webb says "could have important applications for technology, such as the development of self-learning small robotic devices."
Webb's team chose the maggot because closely monitoring and controlling its behavior and brain processes in response to stimuli, in this case exposure to odors, was possible.
"We discovered that some specific single brain cells are sufficient, when activated, to make the larva learn that a particular odor is good," Webb says. "We plan to explore this further using a new method...which shows the activity of specific brain cells lighting up, which we can track even when the larva moves around freely."
Webb says the research could lead to small and inexpensive machines for precision agriculture, to be deployed on an as-needed basis. She also sees applications in information, such as the development of software and computer interfaces that can predict a user's next action.
"The next step is to consolidate our findings into a model of the neural learning mechanism of the larva and test this out on a robot," Webb says.
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