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Robotic fly to explore hazardous environments
By siliconindia
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Friday, 17 September 2010, 23:38 IST |
5 Comments
Bangalore: Robert Wood, a researcher of Harvard University, is on his track to develop a micro air vehicle that weighs only 60 milligrams and has a wingspan of three centimeters. Once perfected, the robotic, insect-scale device could be used for spying, or to explore hazardous environments.
Wood and his research team are trying to understand how wing design can impact performance for an insect-size, flapping-wing vehicle. "We are developing a suite of capabilities which we hope will lead to MAVs that exceed the capabilities of existing small aircraft", said Wood. If everything goes well, the device could easily become the next phase of high-performance micro air vehicles constructed for the US Air Force, he added.
The researchers are constructing wings and moving them at high frequencies recreating trajectories similar to those of an insect. They are also able to measure multiple force components, and they can observe fluid flow around the wings flapping at more than 100 times per second.
On the challenges for these experiments, Wood said that they have developed a unique fabrication technique for creating wings, actuators, thorax and airframe at the scale of actual insects and evaluating them in fluid conditions appropriate for their scale.
