Watch A Tiny Flying Robot Inspired By Rhinoceros Beetles Flap Its Wings And Take Off
The idea of fashioning a robot after an animal is not a new concept. A group of Northwestern University engineers designed a tiny crab robot smaller than a flea capable of crawling, bending, and even jumping. Nor is a robot taking after an insect a new idea, such as the bee drone designed in 2016 that uses insect tactics to conserve battery life. However, the scientists behind the flying rhinoceros beetle-like robot say theirs is unique in how it folds up its wings while resting, and then deploys them in order to take flight.
“Our robot with foldable wings can be used for search and rescue missions in confined spaces,” explained lead researcher and postdoctoral scientist Hoang-Vu Phan told Tech Xplore. “When flight is not possible, the robot can land or perch on any surface, and then switch to other locomotion modes such as crawling.”
Phan added that insects, including beetles, are believed to use thoracic muscles to deploy and retract their wings at the wing bases, similar to birds and bats. Attempts to mimic this type of action in the past focused on replicating the dynamics of beetle wings in robots using origami-like structures, without paying attention to the movements at the base of the hindwings. However, previous research by Phan in 2020 detected a full two-phase wing deployment, leaving him to wonder why the beetle “uses such a complex procedure if driven by active muscles.”
During Phan’s previous examinations of rhinoceros beetles, he found the rhinoceros beetle leverages its elytra and flapping forces to passively deploy its hindwings for flight. Then, once the insect stops flying and lands on a surface, it then uses the elytra to push the hindwings back onto its body. Both actions are considered passive in nature, according to Phan, and do not entail the use of thoracic muscles which support the flight of birds and bats.
“By implementing this passive mechanism into flapping-wing robots, we demonstrated for the first time that unlike existing flapping robots that keep their wings fixed in a fully extended configuration, our robot can fold the wings along the body when at rest and passively deploy its wings to take off and maintain stable flight,” remarked Phan in an interview with TechXplore.
The thought is by using foldable wings, the robots can be used for search and rescue missions in confined spaces. An example would be entering a collapsed building humans cannot access. Once inside the building, the robot can land and then switch to other locomotion modes, such as crawling.
The flying rhinoceros beetle robot is still being tested, and has thus far yielded promising results. The scientists are hopeful that future renditions can be improved and tested in various real-world scenarios.
