Can a fruit fly navigate 100's of miles like a UAV? Does that make it less intelligent? You are confusing some issues with sensors and physics with intelligence. I've build CAD algorithms to do automatic routing of integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The complexity of the mazes in this case far exceed anything a fruit fly would ever encounter in the real world. In their own fashion those algorithms far exceed the intelligence of a fruit fly.

A UAV simply follows GPS signals thru an uncluttered environment. That and old map terrain following cruise missile technology has no chance in a dynamic target avoidance environ.

Sensing and responding to the physical world is PRECISELY the intelligence that the fly has and that computer algorithms lack. That's my point.

CAD algorithms are precisely what I mentioned by static, unchanging non-physical environs. Topics ideal for compute based algorithms. That's like saying a computer is smarter than a human because it can multiply big #s faster. Duh.

One last time (for me), the fly has to deal with dynamic 3-D reality in REAL TIME. I'll cite the pathetic example of last year's DOD contest where out of dozens of the pre-selected best entries, NONE of the simple ground vehicles made it anything close to a mile thru Death Valley.

-p (case closed, except for the unreasoning obstinate)