Raphael Thys
University of Washington researchers built a gnat-sized robot, Robofly to address robotics-related problems.
A new flight control and wind sensing system that University of Washington researchers have created may be able to help solve this difficult robotics problem and allow steady flight of robots as small as a gnat. The accelerometer—a sensor that can measure the acceleration of any moving machine, item, or body—is the foundation of this system, which was first described in Science Robotics. Small flying insects-sized lightweight robots could be used for space exploration, hazardous site inspections, search-and-rescue operations, and other extremely beneficial real-world tasks. Despite their potential, these robots have yet to be fully realized, in part because of technological difficulties that were faced when attempting to steady their flight and mechanically mimic the natural hovering skills of insects. According to Sawyer Fuller, one of the researchers who conducted the work, “for almost 40 years, roboticists and microfabrication experts have dreamed of producing ‘gnat-sized’ robots that weigh just a few milligrams. This idea was first put up by Anita Flynn at Berkeley.
Researchers from Berkeley University and the Army Research Labs were among those who succeeded in their attempts to develop actuation systems for insect-sized robots weighing 10 mg or less in recent years. But so far, it has been difficult to reliably stabilize and control the flight of these exceedingly tiny robots. ” Later, she and Rodney Brooks advocated sending small robots known as “smart dust” out to study the solar system in the amusing paper titled “Fast, cheap, and out of control: a robot invasion of the solar system.” These robots would be considerably smaller than the 100-mg, bumblebee-sized UW Robofly that students in my lab have so far developed.”
Without feedback management, small flapping-wing robots and drones are typically unstable, according to Fuller. “They fall out of the sky in a hurry if you turn on the wings or rotors. According to theory, flies use gyroscopic halteres as feedback to compensate. Therefore, incorporating a gyroscope into the robot’s architecture would be a logical answer. In my doctoral work, I discovered that flies use a sensation of wind from their feather-shaped antennae to guide their flying, which is where our answer to the issue came from, Fuller said. In this study, we demonstrated that measuring airspeed, as done by flies, is possible using an accelerometer, a different kind of sensor. The main advantage is that accelerometers are fundamentally more compact and effective than gyroscopes. They come in a packet weighing just 2 mg and are readily available off the shelf. “We found that the two systems responded pretty similarly when we compared a simulated reaction of our system to a blast of wind with how fruit flies respond to the same gust,” Fuller said. “We can now test an intriguing theory concerning insect flight control. In particular, it suggests that flying insects without gyroscopes, such as bees and moths, may be able to control their erratic flight dynamics by detecting wind with their antennae.” Fuller continued, “We were able to develop a stabilizing flight control system based on commercially available parts that is small enough for a gnat-sized robot. “Our approach might also be modified to work with larger robots, like the 100 mg UW Robofly, giving additional payload space to a bigger battery or more sensors. We intend to demonstrate it flying on the UW Robofly in our next investigations.”
Gyroscopes may potentially be integrated to assist small flying robots fly, however the gyroscopes now on the market are nowhere near as efficient or light as they would need to be to fly on such light devices. An complete gnat-sized robot weights 15 mg, which is 5 mg more than the lightest gyroscope that has been created to date. Using a 30-gram robot, Fuller and his colleagues evaluated their system in simulations and actual trials and discovered that it could successfully stabilize its flight and accurately mimic the flight dynamics of fruit flies. They anticipate using it and testing it on numerous different flying robots in the future, including smaller robots that weigh 10 mg or less.
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