Tom Daniel‘s talks’s title is “Bugs, Brains and Borgs: Reverse Engineering Moving Systems. It’s a great presentation, but too rich to encapsulate via love-blogging.

He shows how complex and messy systems are. E.g., he shows footage of a hawk moth that hovers and sucks nectar from flowers at night and the flowers are moving. That’s a lot of data to process. He shows a single cell in a moth brain that’s excited if the visual field moves to the right and not if the world moves the left. [He credits the grad students who did the research — always nice to hear.] The neuron responds more slowly than the wings — it takes a couple of wing beats for the neuron to react. The neuron projects into the motor output region. Antenna strain sensors respond to changes in position faster than the visual systems do; that’s how the moth knows its pitch and yaw. Another neuron responds to the neurons that sense these changes. This leads to the third thoracic ganglion that flexes the abdomen and slows the wing beat, controlling the flight.

He ends by talking about the fairy fly, the smallest flying insect. Its brain is so tiny that it’s hard to understand how the neurons operate. He suggests studying it as a way to get new concepts in computing (with a nod to Janine Benyus).

This and Benyus’ sessions are the prototypes of a PopTech presentation. Fascinating.

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