MIT researchers developed resilient artificial muscles that can enable insect-scale aerial robots to effectively recover flight performance after suffering severe damage.
MIT researchers have pioneered a new fabrication technique that enables them to produce low-voltage, power-dense, high endurance soft actuators for an aerial microrobot. These artificial muscles vastly improve the robot’s payload and allow it to achieve best-in-class hovering performance.
When it comes to robots, bigger isn’t always better. Someday, a swarm of insect-sized robots might pollinate a field of crops or search for survivors amid
Researchers Create Tiny, Cicada-Like Drones to Invade Small Spaces
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Screenshot: Kevin Yufeng Chen
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When we think of drones, we imagine massive, quadrotor machines that buzz around like manic seagulls. But what if your drown was small enough to accidentally swallow?
That’s what MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has built: a set of tiny drones with elastic actuators that power insect-like wings. The entire package weighs 665 mg or about the “approximately the mass of a large bumble bee,” according to Chen.
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IMAGE: Insects remarkable acrobatic traits help them navigate the aerial world, with all of its wind gusts, obstacles, and general uncertainty. view more
Credit: Courtesy of Kevin Yufeng Chen
If you ve ever swatted a mosquito away from your face, only to have it return again (and again and again), you know that insects can be remarkably acrobatic and resilient in flight. Those traits help them navigate the aerial world, with all of its wind gusts, obstacles, and general uncertainty. Such traits are also hard to build into flying robots, but MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has built a system that approaches insects agility.