Over ten years of hard work is paying off at Harvard University, where Robobee recently made its maiden flight. Robobee is a multi-million dollar project aimed at creating a small flying robots that uses flapping wings, similar to that of a bee, in order to stay aloft.
The current model of Robobee weighs just eighty milligrams and has a wingspan of three centimeters. These wings are operated independently of each other and beat approximately 120 times per second, much faster, even, than a hummingbird. In addition, the robot houses an electronic “brain” which allows the device to sense obstacles and other devices, control flight, and make simple decisions.
While much work is still needed to perfect the robot’s maneuvering and decision making abilities, Harvard engineers consider the maiden flight to be a monumental step. This is because one of the main challenges that engineers have faced has been creating stable and sustained flight for the miniature robot. The flapping of the robot’s wings inherently causes much twisting and turning of the main body of the robot. Therefore, hundreds of prototypes have failed to exhibit stable, controllable flight. However, the design has never altered from implementing flapping wings as the source of lift. According to Harvard, this is because bees have “unmatched elegance in flight”, possessing the ability to quickly zip from place to place while effortlessly hovering between movements. This elegance is something that engineers have been unwilling to compromise.
Another issue that Harvard engineers have faced is finding components small enough to operate within their desired size range. The Robobee is only slightly smaller than a quarter and components such as electromagnetic motors are very hard to come by in sizes that small. The graphic below shows the components of the Robobee as well as several size comparisons with a standard US penny.
The creation of the Robobee was prompted in part by recent declines in honeybee population. It is widely agreed upon that further decreases in the honeybee population could have catastrophic results on the worlds ecosystem. Therefore, the Robobee was in fact modeled to mimic the function of a bee. One of the main applications of the Robobee is the ability to autonomously pollinate crops, effectively compensating for the recent decline in honeybee population. With this knowledge, it is easy to see why the elegant flight described above was of utmost important to the design of the micro-robot.
In addition to the artificial pollination of crops, the Robobee is expected to be used in search and rescue missions following major disasters. The size of the Robobee lends the device extremely impressive maneuverability into hard to reach areas, allowing search and rescue teams to scout out victims while eliminating the risk of sending human rescuers into the wreckage zones with no guarantee of finding anybody.
Word is yet to be released on when the Robobee project is expected to be completed but it may not be much longer before swarms of robotic insects roam the earth.
A video showing the flight of the Robobee is included below.
For more information on the project, please visit http://robobees.seas.harvard.edu/.