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

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

    Developer - Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory

    RoboBee on Wikipedia

    Leader - Robert Wood

    Playlist "Robobees"

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    RoboBees: Design Poses Intriguing Engineering, Computer Science Challenges - Science Nation

    Published on Oct 25, 2012

    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.
    Article "Robotic Insects Make First Controlled Flight"

    by Harvard University
    May 2, 2013

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    Robotic Insect: World's Smallest Flying Robot Takes Off 2013 HD

    Published on May 2, 2013

    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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    Tiny Insect-Like Flying Robots

    Published on May 3, 2013

    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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    Controlling a robotic insect using ocelli

    Published on Jun 24, 2014

    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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    National Geographic Live! - Robert Wood: Robotic Insects

    Published on Aug 4, 2014

    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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    Harvard RoboBee diving, hovering, swimming

    Uploaded on Sep 30, 2015

    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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    RoboBee: from aerial to aquatic

    Published on Oct 21, 2015

    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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    RoboBees use static electricity to stick on walls

    Published on May 19, 2016

    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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