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RoboBee takes its first controlled flight
Inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap almost invisibly at 120 times-per-second, this tiny robot -- the RoboBee -- takes its first controlled flight.
More about this image
The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot was the culmination of more than a decade's work, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and Wyss.
Potential applications of the RoboBee project could include distributed environmental monitoring, search-and-rescue operations or assistance with crop pollination, but the materials, fabrication techniques and components that emerge along the way might prove to be even more significant.
Read more about this research in the Harvard news story Robotic insects make first controlled flight. (Date image taken: May 2013; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: Oct. 19, 2017)
Credit: Photos courtesy of Kevin Ma and Pakpong Chirarattananon, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
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