These Insect-Sized Flying Robots Might be on a Mission!

Insect-sized flying robots are in trend for carrying out potentially big jobs that even humans can't do

Robotics is on its way to enhancing the productivity of global industries. Robots are now used to upscale the production of various products and services. After conquering almost all businesses and industries on a global basis, scientists are now on their attempt to build micro insect-like robots that can be used in life and death situations, such as finding people in collapsed buildings. Recently, researchers from the University of Bristol created a new insect-sized flying robot with flapping wings. The aim was to pave the way for smaller, lighter, and more effective micro flying robots for environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and deployment in a hazardous environment. 

Until now, typical micro flying robots generally possessed motors, gears, and other complex transmission systems to achieve the up-and-down motion of the wings. But this has added weight and undesired dynamic effects. But the team of researchers from Bristol's Faculty of Engineering has successfully demonstrated a direct-drive artificial muscle system, called LAZA that achieves wings motion using no rotating parts or gears. The system greatly simplifies the flapping mechanism, enabling future miniaturization of flapping robots using rotating parts or gears. 

The team demonstrated how the LAZA system can deliver consistent flapping over more than one million cycles, important for making flapping robots that can undertake long-haul flights. The team expects the LAZA system to be adopted as a fundamental building block for a range of autonomous insect-like flying robots. These drones can be used for potential search and rescue robots to find survivors in disaster debris that bigger drones cannot reach. 

Micro-drones like such have other potential uses, like artificially pollinating crops or carrying small cameras to inspect turbine engines. These machines can also carry out potentially big jobs that would be dangerous for human workers to carry out.