After over a decade of work, the so-called “RoboBee” has taken flight. Harvard University Researchers have been dedicated to creating an insect-sized robot for years and the work has finally paid off.
According to the researchers, the robot half the size of a paperclip and weighing less than a tenth of gram, was able to hover for a few moments and then flew on a “preset route through the air.”
“This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years,” Robert J. Wood, principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-supported RoboBee project, said in a statement. “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.”
The tiny machine was actually inspired by the biology of a fly, which included a submillimeter-scale body and two wafer-thin wings. The wings seem to flap invisibly and beat at a rate of 120 times per second.
Developing the little guy was not easy, and that wasn’t just the technology behind the project. Each part of the tiny apparatus had to be handcrafted for a robot this small.
CBS News has the full article
Slice of SciFi RoboBees
Pop-up Fabrication of the Harvard Monolithic Bee (Mobee)
