 alternate to deform the thorax. In this way, the wings are snapped up and down very rapidly. )
The Mechanics of Beetle Flight: Beetles move their wings much the way a tuning fork oscillates. Instead of pulling the wings up and down directly, two sets of muscles (color-coded orange in this diagram for contracting and blue for stretching) alternate to deform the thorax. In this way, the wings are snapped up and down very rapidly.
Image: Illustration by Bryan Christie
In Brief
- Martial need: The military would like to develop tiny robots that can fly inside caves and barricaded rooms to send back real-time intelligence about the people and weapons inside.
- Technical hitch: Current fully synthetic micromechanical fliers require too much energy to be powered by today’s miniature batteries for longer than a few minutes of free flight.
- Potential solution: Attach a camera and other equipment onto the backs of insects, which are already incredibly energy-efficient fliers, to control where and how they fly.
- Progress so far: Researchers at Berkeley, M.I.T. and Cornell have shown that they can wirelessly control a giant beetle’s ability to start and stop flying, turn left or right, and fly in rough circles.
More In This Article
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Sidebar
Cyborg beetles in action [video]
The common housefly is a marvel of aeronautical engineering. One reason the fly is a master at evading the handheld swatter is that its wings beat remarkably fast—about 200 times a second. To achieve this amazing speed, the fly makes use of complex biomechanics. Its wings are not directly attached to the muscles of the thorax. Rather the fly tenses and relaxes the muscles in rhythmic cycles that cause the thorax itself to change shape. That deformation in turn sets the wings to oscillating, much the way a tuning fork vibrates after having been struck. In this way, the fly manages to convert a tiny bit of energy into a whole lot of motion with very little effort.
Engineers, spurred by the miniaturization of computer circuits and micromanufacturing techniques, have done their best to build tiny flying machines that imitate this locomotive ability. The DelFly Micro, unveiled in 2008 by researchers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, weighs only three grams, has a wingspan of 100 millimeters and can carry a tiny video camera. The synthetic flier produced at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory is even smaller—it weighs in at a mere 0.06 gram (still more than four times heavier than a fly)—though once set in motion, the flier’s flight cannot be controlled. The real Achilles’ heel of these mechanical insects, however, is the amount of power they consume: no one has yet figured out how to pack enough energy into miniature batteries to supply the fliers with juice for more than a few minutes of flight.
This article was originally published with the title Cyborg Beetles.
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8 Comments
Add CommentI had so much fun editing this article. Just the fact of being able to wirelessly control a beetle's flight pattern is so amazing. I'll bet science teachers at hotshot high schools will be teaching their students how to do this in another decade or so--just the way some of them are introducing students to PCR experiments now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood point, Christine!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can imagine in 60 years buying my grand kids remote-controlled insects for Christmas presents.
Can you imagine the first guy who wirelessly controlled a flying beetle?
"Dude- check this out! I have mind control over this beetle."
"No way!"
"Way! Watch- tell me when you want him to fly and I'll use the force to make him do it."
Great bar trick!
I like this a lot, but I expect if it were used in the field the robot beetle would get eaten by something pretty quickly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been following articles and new research developments in this and other areas of using biological models and even using insects as remote observers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are two paths to achieving the same goal.
The first is the easiest, modify existing insects with neural circuitry and sensors that make them disposable spy's.
http://www.switched.com/2010/02/19/remote-control-cockroaches-will-help-stop-nuclear-doomsday/
Grow a batch, weed out the undesirables, and attach control and sensors, then box them up to be used and disposed of. The circuitry is micro printed and disposable with he insect.
The second is the more costly and difficult part. Recreating the materials, power systems [ micro-batteries that last tens of hours], and the control and sensor systems, so as to not weigh down the unit.
It is much easier and less costly to modify existing 'critters" who are already a renewable resource than to make one from scratch.
Either way I'm interested to see how all of this turns out.
Well, the obvious long-term direction would be to just engineer organisms that grow their own controllers. That of course is far in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOTOH how far in the future are remotely controlled higher organisms? I doubt the simple techniques used in beetles would be very useful there, but if you can make a beetle decide it 'wants' to fly, how much harder is it to make a rat want to initiate some more complex behavior, or a man? There sure are ethical considerations, but they are mostly far beyond the scope of this current effort. Not sure I really want to stick around long enough to see it played out though...
This is some great science/engineering. Very cool.
Great! Coming from an area plagued by mosquitos and flies in the summer, the idea of having another kind of bug to worry about does not impress me. These ones won't even be susceptible to bug repellant or insecticides.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLeave it to the military and their sycophants to corrupt most anything. I say UGH to this concept and to the likes of Maharbiz and Sato, who aid andabet this travesty! Agaun, UGH!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is fascinating stuff, but...nowhere in the article is there any discussion, or any question of the ethical implications of this research. The idea of implanting control circuits into insects, then vertebrates, then...humans? Should at least make us think. Personally, I find the idea of taking digital control of a living creature somewhere on the intersection of grim and horrible.
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