ROBOBEE X-WING

 

For: Mains

Topics covered: About RoboBee X-wing, First-generation, Second generation – features and significances, specifications

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News Flash

RoboBee X-Wing is essentially a flying machine, which can flap its wings 120 times a second and is half the size of a paperclip.

• It is the lightest insect-scale aerial vehicle so far to have achieved sustained, untethered flight.
• The robot can sustain a flight for less than a second.

 

Background

• Researchers from the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory in Cambridge have claimed to have made it.
• Initially, the researchers called this lightest centimetre-sized vehicle, “RoboBee”.
• But with the current advancement which makes it possible for RoboBee to fly untethered, its name has been upgraded to, “RoboBee X-Wing”.
• RoboBee X-Wing is the sequel, of sorts, to a previous influential robot developed at Harvard called RoboBee.

 

 

Specifications

• The robot weighs 259 mg and uses 110-120 milliwatts of power using solar energy.
• With this, the robot is matching the “thrust efficiency” of similarly sized insects such as bees.
• The robot is heavier than the air it displaces.
• The main changes in the new vehicle design include the use of four wings instead of two.
• It increases efficiency by up to 30%, and improved actuator and transmission design, increasing lift by up to 38%.

 

Significance

• Flapping-wing robots can help in addressing questions related to the evolution of flight, the mechanical basis of natural selection and environmental monitoring.
• Others are interested in replicating these abilities to build a new array of machines.

 

Way Ahead

The applications of this robot are still a bit far off.

The Robobee could one day be used as distributed sensor networks for environmental monitoring and mapping confined spaces such as in disaster zones or archaeological sites.

 

Source: Indian Express

 

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