RoboBee is a tiny robot capable of partially untethered flight, developed by a research robotics team at Harvard University. The culmination of twelve years of research, RoboBee solved two key technical challenges of micro-robotics. Engineers invented a process inspired by pop-up books that allowed them to build on a sub-millimeter scale precisely and efficiently. To achieve flight, they created artificial muscles capable of beating the wings 120 times per second.
The goal of the RoboBee project is to make a fully autonomous swarm of flying robots for applications such as search and rescue, surveillance and artificial pollination.[1] To make this feasible, researchers need to figure out how to get power supply and decision making functions, which are currently supplied to the robot via a tiny tether which is integrated with the main body.
The 3-centimeter (1.2 in) wingspan of RoboBee makes it the smallest man-made device modeled on an insect to achieve flight.
- ^ Project website of the Wyss Institute, Harvard - https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/autonomous-flying-microrobots-robobees/