Insects are many things – but they are not fragile. Sure, most cannot withstand the full force of a human foot, but because of their size, they have become extremely robust and resilient. Insect-sized technology in general is a different story.
That was certainly the historic case with scaled-down drones. The components in particular tend to get more fragile the more you shrink them. In particular, motors both lose efficiency and weaken them the smaller they get.
Previous models from the MIT lab relied on rigid ceramic-based materials. You’ve taken on the job of getting the robot up in the air, but as the lab notes, “bumblebees collide about every second.” In other words, if you want to build something this small, you have to make sure that it doesn’t break the first time it comes into contact with something.
“The challenge of building small flying robots is immense,” says MIT assistant professor Kevin Yufeng Chen.
New drone models, which the laboratory calls “cassettes with wings”, consist of soft actuators made of rubber cylinders coated with carbon nanotubes. The actuators lengthen when power is applied up to 500 times per second. This causes the wings to flap and the drones to fly.
The drones are also extremely light with a weight of around 0.6 grams – basically as much as a large bumblebee. There are still limitations to these early models. The system currently requires them to be hard-wired to deliver the required charge – as seen in the GIF below. It can be a little messy. Other modifications are made as well, including a more nature-inspired dragonfly shape used on newer prototypes.
Credit: WITH
Should the lab be able to produce such a robot with no imaging capabilities and a battery of reasonable size, the potential applications for the tiny drones are immense. They have everything from simple inspections currently being done on larger models to pollination, search and rescue.
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