Harvard's robotic fly takes off

Last summer, I posted that the first microrobotic fly had actually flown. Built by Harvard University professor Robert Wood and his colleagues, with funds from the US military ('natch), the 60 milligram robofly boasts a three centimeter wingspan. Its wing motions are based on those of a real fly. The robotic fly project was first, er, launched at Berkeley a decade ago. I'm delighted that I have one of the early resin fly models from that phase in my cabinet of curiosities. The new issue of Harvard Magazine profiles Wood and features the video of the fly at lift off. From the article:

Wood figures he is still only one-third of the way toward his goal of creating an autonomous flying robot. But the next step should be at least as rewarding, considering that it will include a focus on control of the insect–the reason he first got involved in the project years ago. His fly now runs on electricity transmitted via thin wiring from high-voltage amplifiers, but he aims to add an on-board power source. Initially, he hopes for five minutes of flying time, which will be extended as the battery options improve.

Eventually, he hopes to program insect robots to work in a group. “We want a human operator to be able to take out his batch of flies and say, ‘I want you guys to search for carbon dioxide’–a survivor breathing in a collapsed building,” he explains. From there, Wood sees the possibility of building group behaviors into a swarm: a means of pursuing his interest in the study of emergence, which examines how simple organisms such as ants can produce complex group structures.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Previously on BB:
• Robofly takes off Link
• UC Berkeley's micro-mechanical flying insect Link

• [jimh]

  How long until they can carry a tiny cam and a lethal dose of potassium cyanide?

• [ctp]

  “But why would he say that a real fly’s wings are a less than optimal shape? Flies seem to be dandy at, flying…”

  Good thing they didn’t set out to make a robotic bumblebee then ;-)

• [Pyros]

  This is great! Only a matter of time before we can use swarming robot flies to kill all of our enemies instantly. What an advantage it will give us in war!

  Funds from the U.S. military? I’m sure that the U.S. military has only an academic interest in “swarm behavior” and finding survivors in a collapsed building. Who cares about the lethal potentiality of weapons when they can be fetishized as cool gadgetry. As Itchy and Scratchy might have advised (or did advise) Kill! Kill! Kill! Fucking scientists. I suppose we’re supposed to think that they’re smart.

• [Phlip]

  Declare an emergency… and release the mosquitoes!

  http://flea.sourceforge.net/EAP_5.html

• [Jason McIntosh]

  Surely Boing Boing needs a “THINK SMALL” tag to complement its “THINK BIG” one (seen on the nearby elevator-testing-tower post).

• [Jeff]

  Shades of the future. I wonder what it’s going to be like when robotic spiders or flys can sit on our wall and see and hear…all. We think we have privacy issues now?

• [Jeff]

  If there is a technological niche to be filled then someone is going to design something to fill it. And down the road some imaginative AI will design it. Either way, I’m sure we will see all sorts of tech that is both beautiful and useful and sometimes horrible. Now it’s robotic flys, next it might be the nano-bot swarms that eat everything.

  A slogan or two for our times: This isn’t the age of Me, it’s the Age of We. Or, The Sigularity Begins With Us.

• [Pyros]

  These robot insects have really got me thinking. The last thing the human race needs are swarms of robotic insects. I think we need this even less that than the pain machine developed by supposedly smart people working for the pentagon that was recently shown to make entire crowds feel like they’re being boiled alive in hot lard. And just like hell, this machine only causes pain and not permanent harm!

  What is wrong with people?

  We need a new slogan for our age. In the ’60s it was, “If it feels good, do it”.

  But that message is a little bit too difficult to understand these days. We need a simpler message meant to resonate on a more primitive level: for our age,

  “If it feels bad, don’t do it.”

  You wouldn’t think that it would need to be said, but apparently it does. Yet, at the point at which it needs to be said, does saying do much good?

  There’s supposed to be an internal mechanism which is supposed to prevent people from acting against their own self-interest. Something must be broken.

• [Pipenta]

  CTP, There’s an extra pair of wings on that Harvard logo. Perhaps the first go-round was based on a bumblebee model and that project got grounded.

  The living insect in the footage looks rather bee-like. I’m not getting a clear image to say for sure. How many pairs of wings? It could be a bee mimic, but those antennae look more hymenopteran to me.

  I’ll worry about the spy potential of these things when they figure out how to steer and power them. As it stands, the extension cord is going to be a dead giveaway.

• [forgeweld]

  It’s time to start bringing long handled nets to public protests and events. It will be fun to capture little flying spybots and repurpose them. At some point, the government will pass laws that recognize them legally as equivalent to a human, like police dogs are,to put serious criminal sanctions on messing with them.

• [Daniel Hechtman]

  Cool. We need a robotic aardvark to eat the robotic fly. A modern food chain.

• [yar42]

  My thoughts can be summed up in one word–quidditch!

• [Pipenta]

  Nifty little gizmo.

  But why would he say that a real fly’s wings are a less than optimal shape? Flies seem to be dandy at, flying…

  And where are robofly’s halteres?

• [MonkeyBoy]

  the video cuts off in the middle for me. Does it work for anybody else?

• [thecmgeek]

  Wonder if these are related to what was seen at the Sept 15th anti-war rally in DC last year. (Link to WaPo article.)