Fruit flies can be made to act like miniature robots

Even the tiniest of living things are capable of some amazing forms of locomotion, and some come with highly sophisticated sensor suites and manage to source their energy from the environment. Attempts to approach this sort of flexibility with robotics have taken two forms. One involves making tiny robots modeled on animal behavior. The other involves converting a living creature into a robot. So far, either approach has involved giving up a lot. You're either only implementing a few of life's...