Robotic insect makes first controlled flight
Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have, for the first time, been able to control the flight of an insect-sized robot.
Using new manufacturing and design processes, the team managed to keep the coin-sized bug aloft by independently manipulating its wings with piezoelectric actuators - strips of ceramic that expand and contract when an electric field is applied.
Thin hinges of plastic embedded within the carbon fibre body frame serve as joints, and a delicately balanced control system commands the rotational motions in the flapping-wing robot, with each wing controlled independently in real time.
"This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years," said principal investigator Robert Wood.
"It's really only because of this lab's recent breakthroughs in manufacturing, materials and design that we have even been able to try this. And it just worked, spectacularly well."
