RoboFly, the first wireless robotic flying insect

We probably remember RoboBee, the insect robot. Now, his successor -improved-, RoboFly, is presented as a miniature robot that can fly thanks to the laser. It does not need batteries or cables like its predecessor. This wireless minidron with the shape and size of a bee, extracts its energy from the light impulses of a laser.

Flying robots the size of an insect, such as RoboFly, could help with tasks such as inspecting the growth of crops on farms or detecting gas leaks. These robots fly with tiny wings because they are too small to use propellers (like the ones we see in their cousins ​​the larger drones). Of course, this small size is quite an advantage: these robots are cheap to manufacture and can easily slip into narrow places that are inaccessible to larger drones.

The interesting thing about RoboFly is also that you do not need cables, but a small AI that tells the wings when they should move. Although it seems a trifle it is a giant leap for robots. The robotic insect uses a small circuit on board that converts the energy of the laser into enough electricity to make its wings work.

The engineering challenge was the flutter of the insect. This movement of the wing is a process that requires a lot of energy, and both the power source and the controller that directs the wings are too large and too bulky to be mounted aboard a small robot. And a flying robot should be able to fly by itself.

To do this, researchers at the University of Washington (USA) decided to use a narrow invisible laser beam to feed the robot. They aimed the laser beam at a photovoltaic cell, which is connected above RoboFly and converts the laser light into electricity.

"It was the most efficient way to quickly transmit a lot of power to RoboFly without adding too much weight," says Shyam Gollakota, co-author of the work.

Even so, the laser does not provide enough voltage to move the wings. That is why the team designed a circuit that increased the seven volts that leave the photovoltaic cell to the 240 volts necessary for the flight.

And to give RoboFly control over its own wings, the engineers provided a brain: they added a microcontroller to the same circuit.

"The microcontroller acts like the brain of a real fly that tells the wing muscles when to move," said Vikram Iyer, co-author of the study. Specifically, the controller sends voltage in waves to mimic the flutter of the wings of a real insect.

For now, RoboFly can only take off and land. Once your photovoltaic cell is out of the direct line of sight of the laser, the robot runs out of energy and lands. But the team hopes to be able to direct the laser soon so that the revolutionary wireless robotic insect can fly independently.

Future versions of Robofly could use tiny batteries or extract energy from radio frequency signals; in this way, your energy source could be modified for specific tasks. They may also have more advanced brain systems and sensors that help robots fly and complete tasks on their own, the researchers say.

"I would really like to make one that finds methane leaks, you could buy a suitcase full of them, open it up and they would fly around your building looking for gas columns that come out of the pipeline." If these robots can facilitate the search for leaks, it will reduce Greenhouse gas emissions This is inspired by real flies, which are very good for flying looking for smelly things, so we believe that this is a good application for our RoboFly, "says Sawyer Fuller, co-author of the work.