Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Bee+ Robobee Now With Four Wings
I did a number of stories on the original robobee flapping wing robotic insect (see below, click through to see sfnal precursors), but diligent USC researchers have made improvements. Behold Bee+ aka Bee plus.
(Bee+ robo bee plus flying robot)
Enter Xiufeng Yang and pals from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. These guys have developed actuators that are half the weight of previous versions. They used four of them to build a robot with four flapping wings, each with a span of just 33 milimeters. The result is an insect-like flying machine called Bee+. It’s capable of perching, landing, following a path, and avoiding obstacles.The breakthrough is based on a clever piece of engineering. The actuators in the 2013 RoboBee were of a type called bimorphs. These are cantilevers made of two layers of piezoelectric material separated by a passive layer. The piezoelectric layers alternately contract, forcing the cantilever to bend back and forth. This motion drives the flapping of a wing.
But Yang and co have found a way to make them even lighter using an actuator design called a unimorph. Instead of two layers of piezoelectric material, a unimorph uses a single strip attached to a passive layer. The repeated contraction of the piezoelectric layer causes the cantilever to bend. And the movement of the tip of the cantilever drives the flapping of a wing.
Indeed, more advances are desperately needed. Bee+ may be inspired by insects, but at 95 milligrams, it is a behemoth compared with the real creatures. A bumblebee, for example, weighs about a 10 milligrams and is self-powered to boot.
Robobee is a pretty cool flying robot; see these additional stories for science fiction references:
- Robobees To Swarm At Harvard
- Robobee Learns The Waggle Dance
- RoboBee Swarm Replaces Pollinating Insects?
- Harvard's Robobee Has Insect-Inspired Eyes
Via Technology Review.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/11/2019)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Robotics ")
Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.' - Aldo Giunta, 1957
Students Vie For Lunar Regolith Mining Robot Prize
'About time you got here,' the astronaut said. - Pournelle and Niven, 1981.
Robot Hand Creeps Along, Separate From It's Owner
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...' - Philip K. Dick, 1955.
Korean Exoskeleton Suit F1 Helps You Put It On
'Better late than never.'
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Robotic Barber Programmed With a Number of Styles
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
Caterpillar Electric Mining Loader Not Yet Ready For Moon
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
Centipede Robots Down On The Farm
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
Anthropic's Claude AI Creates Legal Citation From Whole Cloth
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
Students Vie For Lunar Regolith Mining Robot Prize
'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.
'They Erased My Memory' Says Ariana Grande
'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'
Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'
Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
Robot Hand Creeps Along, Separate From It's Owner
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
Korean Exoskeleton Suit F1 Helps You Put It On
'Better late than never.'
Have AI Researchers Given Up On 'Bio-Babies'?
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets
'The first revelation of the new Soviet bore-pellets.'
'Spikeless' Brand Swizzle Stick Detects Spiked Drinks
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
