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Updated: Jan 20, 2026

An Experimental Platform to Study the Closed-loop Performance of Brain-machine Interfaces
Published on: March 10, 2011
A biohybrid fly-robot interface system that performs active collision avoidance
Jiaqi V Huang1, Yiran Wei, Holger G Krapp
1Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
We have designed a bio-hybrid fly-robot interface (FRI) to study sensorimotor control in insects. The FRI consists of a miniaturized recording platform mounted on a two-wheeled robot and is controlled by the neuronal spiking activity of an identified visual interneuron, the blowfly H1-cell. For a given turning radius of the robot, we found a proportional relationship between the spike rate of the H1-cell and the relative distance of the FRI from the patterned wall of an experimental arena. Under closed-loop conditions during oscillatory forward movements biased towards the wall, collision avoidance manoeuvres were triggered whenever the H1-cell spike rate exceeded a certain threshold value. We also investigated the FRI behaviour in corners of the arena. The ultimate goal is to enable autonomous and energy-efficient manoeuvrings of the FRI within arbitrary visual environments.
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