Fly Eye, Worm Brain: A Car That Drives on Borrowed Biology
Maker Faire Bay Area 2026
September 25th-27th
Most self-driving systems run neural networks with millions of parameters. This exhibit asks how little you actually need. Our car steers using two pieces of borrowed biology: the contrast and motion detectors found in a fly's eye, and a circuit of just 19 neurons copied from the wiring of the roundworm C. elegans. Visitors can watch all nineteen neurons firing live on screen as the car drives, and see a side-by-side test where a conventional camera-based driver is fooled by a shadow falling across the track while the fly-eye version drives straight through it. Built by students at AOST.
Academy of Smart Thinkers
An academy built on intuitive problem-solving and motivation to seek knowledge by empowering the future generation to help engineer solutions for the problems of our future.
