Robot insects may
someday be used in agriculture and disaster relief situations.
Credit:
Microrobotics Lab, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and
Applied Sciences
and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
(October 21, 2015) The
flying insects, designed for agriculture and disaster relief, will rely on
technology used by driverless cars
How do you teach robotic insects to see?
By equipping them with tiny laser-powered sensors that act
as eyes, enabling the miniature machines to sense the size, shape and distance
of approaching objects.
“Essentially, it’s the same technology that automakers are
using to ensure that driverless cars don’t crash into things,” says University
at Buffalo computer scientist Karthik Dantu. “Only we need to shrink that
technology so it works on robot bees that are no bigger than a penny.”
The UB-led research project, funded by a $1.1 million
National Science Foundation grant, includes researchers from Harvard University
and the University of Florida. It is an offshoot of the RoboBee initiative, led
by Harvard and Northeastern University, which aims to create insect-inspired robots
that someday may be used in agriculture and disaster relief.
Researchers have shown that robot bees are capable of
tethered flight and moving while submerged in water. One of their limitations,
however, is a lack of depth perception. For example, a robot bee cannot sense
what’s in front of it.
Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for
Biologically Inspired Engineering.
This is problematic if you want the bee to avoid flying into
a wall or have it land in a flower, says Dantu, who worked on the RoboBee
project as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard before joining UB’s School of
Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2013 as an assistant professor.
The UB-led research team will address the limitation by
outfitting the robot bee with remote sensing technology called lidar, the same
laser-based sensor system that is making driverless cars possible.
read entire press release (Harvard Un.) >>