Fly-Sized Robotic Fly Flies
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 2 of January , 2008 at 6:03 am
Robotics researchers have long been envious of flying insects, many of which are able to perform all sorts of spectacular acrobatics despite their small wings and smaller brains. Researchers at Harvard University have created a robotic fly the size of a penny that is actually able to fly using a wing structure and motions based on, you guessed it, a fly. The robofly weighs 60 milligrams (the equivalent of a few grains of rice), and beats its 1.5cm wings 120 (!) times per second. Most impressively, the actuating composite motor that powers the wings is 5 times more powerful for its weight than the muscles of a real fly.
You’ll notice in the video that the robofly takes off while attached to wires. Currently, there is no on-board power source, although that’s step 3. Step 2 is going to be making the fly controllable somehow, which (I’m guessing) is going to be (to put it mildly) tricky. Robert Wood, the designer of the fly, is taking a very biological approach to the project, but he’s not letting it constrain him, which I find to be pretty progressive:
Success meant that Wood could finally turn to those questions that weren’t worth asking until the fly took off: Is the shape of a fly’s wings (a less-than-optimal design which Wood improved on in his robotic version) a biological limitation, or does it somehow aid the fly’s aerodynamics? Does a four-winged insect offer a design improvement? Even questions of evolutionary biology come into play: Why did all the four-winged arthropod flyers of the late Carboniferous period evolve to have two wings?
It’s great how the process of designing a biologically inspired robot may actually help to answer questions about evolutionary biology. By creating a fly from scratch, we get a glimpse of how and why flies are so good at being flies… Hopefully this same philosophy might be extended to other biobots.
[ Harvard Magazine: Robotic Fly ]
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