Tiny flying insect robot has four wings and weighs under a gram
Tiny flying insect robot has four
wings and weighs under a gram
By
26
June 2019
A solar-powered flying robot has become the lightest machine
capable of flying without an attached power source.
Weighing just 259 milligrams, the insect-inspired RoboBee X-Wing
has four wings
that flap at a rate of 170 times per second. It has a wingspan of 3.5
centimetres and is 6.5 cemtimetres high.
The flying robot
was developed by Noah Jafferis and colleagues at Harvard University.
Its wings are controlled by two muscle-like plates that contract when voltage
passes through them. They are powered by six tiny solar cells weighing 10
milligrams each, which
are located above the wings so as not to interfere with flight.
The insect robot’s wings begin
flapping when exposed to light. Currently, it has only been tested in the lab,
where it is powered by a combination of halogen and LED lighting, says
Jafferis.
Limited by the positioning of the artificial lighting, the robot
normally flies for around half a second before it flies out of the field of
light. The robot currently requires the equivalent of three times the intensity
of natural sunlight, so isn’t yet able to fly outside.
Jafferis says the robot could one day be used for monitoring the
environment or manoeuvring through small spaces.
“It’s very light for its size, he says. “If you needed to land on
a leaf, you could, whereas a commercial quadcopter would be too heavy to do
that.”
In future versions, the team hopes to enable the robot to fly in
regular sunlight, and wants to build sensing mechanisms in. “It can then really
control what it’s doing when it’s flying around,” says Jafferis.
Other researchers at the University of Washington have created a
43 milligram robot that flies with no moving parts, but it still requires
external wires for power.
Unlike the RoboBee X-Wing, this robot propels itself upwards
using electrohydrodynamic thrust. An electric field creates charged air
molecules that smack into neutral air molecules, generating upward momentum.
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