Slightly heavier than a toothpick, the first wireless insect-size robot takes flight
Slightly heavier than a toothpick, the first wireless
insect-size robot takes flight
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Engineers from the University of Washington have
created the first wireless insect-size robot, powered by a laser beam.
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Until now, robotic flying insects were
hard-wired to an external power source because the electronics needed to power
and control their wings were much too heavy.
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The engineers say these robo-insects are cheap
to produce and can slip into tight spaces, enabling them to handle tasks the
large aerial drones can't.
Barbara Booth November 2, 2018 CNBC.com
University of Washington engineers created the RoboFly, a
small, flying robot that goes where humans can't
Imagine an insect that can alight along a pipeline to
sniff out gas leaks, swoop beneath plants to detect pests and disease, and slip
into tiny spaces to find disaster survivors. Now imagine holding a laser that
can control its every move.
With the rapid advances in drone technology spanning the
20th century, it should come as no surprise that miniature flying robots are on
the horizon: Between now and 2020, Goldman Sachs' forecasts a $100 billion
market opportunity for drones, helped by growing demand from the commercial and
civil government sectors.
What is surprising is that it has taken researchers more
than two decades to finally come up with a fully autonomous version. That's
because the electronics needed to power and control the wings were so heavy
that, until now, flying robotic insects had to be tethered to a wire attached
to an external power source.
Yet a team of engineers at the University of Washington,
led by assistant professor Sawyer Fuller, were able to figure it out. Relying
on funding from UW, they created RoboFly, a robo-insect powered by an invisible
laser beam that is pointed at a photovoltaic cell, which is attached above the
robot and converts the laser light into enough electricity to operate its
wings.
Because the laser alone can't provide enough voltage to
move the wings, the team designed a circuit that boosts the 7 volts coming out
of the photovoltaic cell up to the 240 volts needed for flight. To give RoboFly
control over its own wings, the engineers added a microcontroller to the same
circuit, which acts like its brain, according to Vikram Iyer, a doctoral
student in the UW Department of Electrical Engineering who is part of Fuller's
team. "It tells the wings things like, 'Flap hard now' or 'Don't
flap,'" he said.
Reinventing robots on an insect scale
Fuller received both his bachelors and masters degrees in
mechanical engineering from MIT and later his Ph.D. in bioengineering from
Caltech. He now directs the Autonomous Insect Robotics Laboratory at UW, which
works to advance insect-scale robotics engineering and better understand the
capabilities of insects. "Robotics on the insect scale have a lot of
constraints. That's what interests me," he said.
By constraints he means "fly-sizing" things
like scanning lasers, cameras and range finders. "A lot of the sensors
that have been used on larger robots successfully just aren't available at fly
size. Radar, scanning lasers, range finders — these things that make the
perfect maps of the world, that things like self-driving cars use. So we're
going to have to use basically the same sensor suite as a fly uses, a little
camera," Fuller said.
Fuller became inspired by insect robotics 20 years ago
when he started observing a group at UC Berkeley who were trying to create a
"micromechanical flying insect" that weighed less than a paper clip
and could lift off the ground and hover.
"They started having success, but these little
flying robots needed a wire going up to them." Later he got involved with
a series of other advances. "We got them to fly under control rather than
just take off; we put sensors on board and made them land and do other
things."
Now 41, Fuller and his team is one step closer to
creating a fully autonomous robo-insect: For now, RoboFly can only take off and
land. Once its photovoltaic cell is out of the direct line of sight of the
laser, the robot runs out of power and lands. But the team hopes to soon be
able to steer the laser so that RoboFly can hover and fly around. They are
currently working on more advanced brains and sensor systems to help the robots
navigate and complete tasks on their own, Fuller said.
"For full autonomous I would say we are about five
years off probably," he said.
According to Goldman Sachs, the three largest industries
for drones are construction, agriculture and insurance, with the total current
market value for each at $11 million, $5 million and $1.4 million,
respectively. Fuller sees many opportunities for robo-insects that the larger
drones can't handle. The application he sees as most promising for flying
robotic insects is micro-agriculture. "Robotic flies will have a part to
play in terms of their ability to fly around and really monitor the environment
— things like humidity, state of disease — in a very detailed level, flying
down, in and above the plants to look for disease or pests and to monitor air
quality."
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