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For years, scientists have been attempting to develop tiny, flying robot insects with mixed results. Now, however, some scientists from Harvard have skipped making robot insects and just gone ahead and converted real, living flies into controllable microrobots.
Earlier this year, MIT scientists developed flying robot insects that can fly for up to 15 minutes and perform acrobatic maneuvers without breaking. They can reach an average speed of 35 centimeters per second, but unfortunately they are unable to fly untethered.
In another research study published in July, Chinese scientists created cyborg bees they can control remotely like a drone. They created these cyborg bees by attaching the world’s smallest mind-control device to them. Yet again, the bugs were unable to work without their device running on wired power.
The human-controllable flies created by the Harvard scientists are another step along that process. Their hope is that these insects can eventually be used for applications such as environmental surveillance, precision agriculture, and search and rescue operations.
“Nature provides efficient solutions to complex challenges,” the Harvard scientists wrote in their report published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Fruit flies, for example, navigate their environment with remarkable agility and can have their behavior precisely controlled through genetic manipulation—all within a 1 mg, 2.5 mm body. We harness this well-studied model organism as a ‘living microrobot,’ steering its movements with targeted visual and odor-based cues. We thereby eliminate the need for complicated robot fabrication at tiny scales while achieving precision navigation, coordinated swarm “writing,” and controlled cargo transport. This biohybrid approach merges biological complexity with engineering goals, creating a class of reliable, adaptive microscale robotic platforms.”
The scientists were able to control the flies using their own optomotor response (visual cues) as well as optogenetic modulation of its olfactory system (its sense of smell). In doing so, they were able to “guide flies along predetermined trajectories” and “scribe patterns resembling textual characters.” An example of this can be seen below where they were able to guide flies into “writing” the phrase “HELLO WORLD.”
The MIT scientists and others have been trying to create tiny, flying robot insects with the hopes of someday using them for pollination. By using real, living flies, the Harvard scientists have been able to overcome obstacles such as dust, humidity, radio interference, and durability.
“Our work provides a foundation for deploying swarms of natural ‘robots’ that, with further innovations, could transform applications like environmental monitoring and disaster response,” the scientists wrote.