This funny-looking machine is a small battery powered vehicle that motors its way around a New York art gallery. Its course is directed and steered entirely by flies. Yes, that plastic bubble is filled with large houseflies, along with food and water to nourish them. The lights shining on the flies serve a dual purpose: they keep the bugs warm, but as the flies twitter about the bubble the reflections that the lights make on the top of the bubble change. Sensors in that black area send the changing light data to a controller that activates the motor and steers the machine around accordingly.

The project's by David Bowen, an artist who has also created machines that track flies' movements to make enormous drawings. His flies don't diagnosing diseases the way the bees do in these bubbles, nevertheless think idea is pretty neat: we've seen robotic insects, but this is a robot run by real insects.

via We Make Money Not Art