If the report of Aamir Khollam from Interesting Engineering were true, then the tiny robotic insects may soon become lifesaving tools in disaster zones. The report further stated that MITT researchers have unveiled an aerial microrobot that flies with unprecedented speed and agility, mirroring the gymnastic motion of real insects.
In the future, these miniature flying machines could navigate collapsed buildings after earthquakes and help locate survivors in places larger robots cannot reach.
The breakthrough marks a significant shift in micro-robotics, where flight stability and speed have historically lagged far behind nature’s engineering.
Earlier versions of insect-scale robots could only fly slowly and along predictable paths. The new robot changes that dynamic entirely.
Roughly the size of a microcassette and lighter than a paperclip, the machine uses soft artificial muscles that power its large flapping wings at high frequency.
The updated hardware enables tight turns, rapid acceleration, and aerial tricks that resemble insect maneuverability.
But hardware alone wasn’t enough. The robot needed a smarter and faster "brain."
That came in the form of a new AI-based controller that interprets the robot’s position and environment, then decides how it should move in real time.
Previous control systems required manual tuning by engineers, which limited performance and didn’t scale for complex movement.
Kevin Chen, associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, explains the goal clearly – "We want to be able to use these robots in scenarios that more traditional quad copter robots would have trouble flying into, but that insects could navigate."
He adds, "Now, with our bioinspired control framework, the flight performance of our robot is comparable to insects in terms of speed, acceleration, and the pitching angle. This is quite an exciting step toward that future goal."
Posts
0 comments
Post a Comment