A simulated fruit fly brain learns to drive. I turned the training into a 24/7 racing league with Elo, seasons and family dynasties [P]

[u/Pepegg2]

For the past 4 weeks I’ve been training models of the Drosophila brain to control a car in a drag racing simulator. To make the training watchable, I turned it into a racing league and stream it live on Twitch.

How it works

• Each “pilot” is a fly brain model of ~2,400 neurons [based on: FlyWire connectome / own architecture / spiking network?]
• Training: [RL algorithm / evolutionary strategy / plasticity rule], 10000000+ episodes so far
• The best pilots produce “offspring”: the next generation inherits their weights, so the league has dynasties (gen 2, child of the season champion, etc.)
• Every Grand Prix is a set of races under different conditions (engine, grip, dry/wet). A fly is “verified” only if it finishes all scenarios cleanly
• Skill is measured with an Elo rating, like in chess

Current state (Season 11, GP 86): the dry-strip record is 10.06 s; the champion has 56.31 s total across 5 scenarios. Last GP was won by a second-generation fly, 0.02 s ahead of its rival.

What surprised me: [1–2 real observations, e.g. “flies discovered launch control on their own”, “descendants overtook the parent in 300 episodes”, “one fly learned to exploit…”]

🔴 Live: twitch.tv/nekrampos
[💻 Code: https://github.com/boeing240/flypilot

Happy to answer questions about the model, the training setup and the visualization. Ideas for new race scenarios are welcome too.