According to a recent article in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Claire Rind, a robotologist at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in England, screened a Star Wars film just for a bunch of locusts so she could monitor their brain activity for research to design a collision-avoidance system for cars.

Apparently, the research was to help her understand how locusts travel in dense swarms without getting tangled up in each other's flight. By showing them a Star Wars film (it's not specified which one of course) she studied their eyes and brain cells reactions to fast-moving objects and backgrounds in the film.

From the article "Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Locust":

Rind found that locusts distinguish between approaching and receding objects from the way in which edges of an object's image grow and move over each compound eye. They also have specific neurons designed for depth perception that aren't like any human brain cells.

She translated the same type of image processing to a three-wheeled robot with movie cameras as "eyes" and made it zoom through an obstacle course. It avoided Lego obstacles 91 per cent of the time.

As cool as this sounds to fans, I'm not so sure it impressed her scientific colleagues. They granted her with a Ig Nobel Peace Prize given at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine. This prize is "given out each year for goofiness and lunacy (sometimes inspired) in science."

I think it was genius, but then again, I could just be rooting for the insects' taste in films.

Read more about her research here:
(which is accompanied by a cute photo of a locust watching Star Wars):

Project Title: Collision Avoidance in Insects and Robots