RoboBee project, robotic insects, Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

It started with a TV show, "Silence of the Bees," about honeybee populations in steep decline. At Harvard University, electrical engineers Rob Wood and Gu-Yeon Wei, and computer scientist Radhika Nagpal saw a challenge. And, so began the creation of the "RoboBee," a miniature flying robot, inspired by the biology of a bee and the insect's hive behavior. With support from the National Science Foundation and a program called Expeditions in Computing, Wood put together a diverse team of collaborators to get the RoboBee project off the ground. One challenge is to design a small exoskeleton to house the bee's wings, motors, brain and electronics. Power is another issue. If the fuel source is too heavy, the bee can't fly. For mass production, Wood's team developed a folding assembly, inspired, in a lot of ways, by a children's pop-up book. Ultimately, the researchers hope to build a colony in which the RoboBees interact, using their hive as a refueling station. They say RoboBees have the potential to be useful in a number of ways, including search and rescue missions, traffic monitoring, and weather mapping.

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Scientists in the US have created a robot the size of a fly that is able to perform the agile manoeuvres of the ubiquitous insects.

This "robo-fly", built from carbon fibre, weighs a fraction of a gram and has super-fast electronic "muscles" to power its wings.

Its Harvard University developers say tiny robots like theirs may eventually be used in rescue operations.

It could, for example, navigate through tiny spaces in collapsed buildings.

Dr Kevin Ma from Harvard University and his team, led by Dr Robert Wood, say they have made the world's smallest flying robot.

It also has the fly-like agility that allows the insects to evade even the swiftest of human efforts to swat them.

This comes largely from very precise wing movements.

By constantly adjusting the effect of lift and thrust acting on its body at an incredibly high speed, the insect's (and the robot's) wings enable it to hover, or to perform sudden evasive manoeuvres.

And just like a real fly, the robot's thin, flexible wings beat approximately 120 times every second.

The researchers achieved this wing speed with special substance called piezoelectric material, which contracts every time a voltage is applied to it.

By very rapidly switching the voltage on and off, the scientists were able to make this material behave like just like the tiny muscles that makes a fly's wings beat so fast.

Dr Ma even suggested that the robots could behave like many real insects and assist with the pollination of crops, "to function as the now-struggling honeybee populations do in supporting agriculture around the world".

The current model of robo-fly is tethered to a small, off-board power source but Dr Ma says the next step will be to miniaturise the other bits of technology that will be needed to create a "fully wireless flying robot".

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The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot is the culmination of more than a decade's work, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

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The Harvard Microrobotics Lab has demonstrated upright stability in a flapping-wing robotic insect using an onboard vision sensor inspired by insect ocelli. This work was funded by the NSF and the Wyss Institute.

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Electrical engineer Robert Wood leads a team that invents and develops entirely new classes of mircrorobots poised to play a transformative role in medicine, search-and-rescue missions, and agriculture.

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“Hybrid Aerial and Aquatic Locomotion in an At-Scale Robotic Insect,” by Yufeng Chen, E. Farrell Helbling, Nick Gravish, Kevin Ma, and Robert J. Wood from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University was presented at IROS 2015 in Hamburg, Germany.

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The RoboBee is a miniature robot that has long been able to fly. But what if the RoboBee lands in water? Using a modified flapping technique, researchers at the Harvard John Paulson School and Wyss Institute have demonstrate that the RoboBee can also swim. This is the first-ever aerial and aquatic capable insect-scale robot.

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The RoboBee, pioneered at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, uses an electrode patch and a foam mount that absorbs shock to stick to ceilings and overhangs. The robot takes off and flies normally. When the electrode patch is supplied with a charge, it can stick to almost any surface, from glass to wood to a leaf. To detach, the power supply is simply switched off.

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Inspired by insects, researchers at the Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS have developed a robot capable of flying...and swimming.

Once the robot swims to the surface of the water, surrounding water is collected in a buoyancy chamber. Within the chamber, an electrolytic plate produced oxyhydrogen. This gives the robot extra buoyancy, which enables it to push its wings out of the water. The water surface tension keeps the robot upright as the wings start to flap. A sparker then ignites the combustible oxyhydrogen, giving the robot a boost, allowing it to jump off the water surface. Hybrid aerial-aquatic robots could be used for environmental explorations and search and rescue missions.

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An insect size robot converts water to gas and ignites it to spring free of water and take flight.

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Changes to the Robobee — including an additional pair of wings and improvements to the actuators and transmission ratio — made the vehicle more efficient and allowed the addition of solar cells and an electronics panel. This Robobee is the first to fly without a power cord and is the lightest, untethered vehicle to achieve sustained flight. (Image courtesy of the Harvard Microrobotics Lab/Harvard SEAS)

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Researchers at SEAS and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a resilient RoboBee powered by soft artificial muscles that can crash into walls, fall onto the floor, and collide with other RoboBees without being damaged. It is the first microrobot powered by soft actuators to achieve controlled flight.

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A team of researchers has developed a new generation of tiny, agile drones that look, act and maneuver like actual insects allowing them to operate in cramped spaces and withstand collisions.

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A new fabrication technique, developed by a team of electrical engineers and computer scientists, produces low-voltage, power-dense artificial muscles that improve the performance of flying microrobots.

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