Detroit is a city of contrasts, but no one has captured the good and bad as vividly as an unidentified hobbyist armed with a cheap helicopter-like flyingrobot and a YouTube account.
"Because the honey bee brain is smaller and more accessible than any vertebrate brain, we hope to eventually be able to produce an accurate and complete model that we can test within a flyingrobot, " said Dr Marshall.
The current model of robo-fly is tethered to a small, off-board power source but Dr Ma says the next step will be to miniaturise the other bits of technology that will be needed to create a "fully wireless flyingrobot".