RoboDragonfly: Tiny Backpack Turns Insect into a Cyborg

A first generation version of the backpack guidance system that includes energy harvesting, navigation and optical stimulation on a to-scale model of a dragonfly.

Credit: Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

Scientists look to flying animals — birds, bats and insects — for inspiration when they design airborne drones. But researchers are also investigating how to use technology to interact with, and even guide, animals as they fly, enhancing the unique adaptations that allow them to take to the air.

To that end, engineers have fitted dragonflies with tiny, backpack-mounted controllers that issue commands directly to the neurons controlling the insects' flight.

This project, known as DragonflEye, uses optogenetics, a technique that employs light to transmit signals to neurons. And researchers have genetically modified dragonfly neurons to make them more light-sensitive, and thereby easier to control through measured light pulses. [7 Animals That Wore Backpacks for Science]

Dragonflies have large heads, long bodies and two pairs of wings that don't always flap in sync, according to a 2007 study published in the journal Physical Review Letters. The study authors found that dragonflies maximize their lift when they flap both sets of wings together, and they hover by flapping their wing pairs out of synch, though at the same rate.

Meanwhile, separate muscles controlling each of their four wings allow dragonflies to dart, hover and turn on a dime with exceptional precision, scientists found in 2014. Researchers used high-speed video footage to track dragonfly flight and build computer models to better understand the insects' complex maneuvers, presenting their findings at the 67th Annual Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, according to a statement released by the American Physical Society in November 2014.

DragonflEye sees these tiny flight masters as potentially controllable flyers that would be "smaller, lighter and stealthier than anything else that's manmade," Jesse Wheeler, a biomedical engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (CSDL) in Massachusetts and principal investigator on the DragonflEye program, said in a statement.

A close-up of the backpack board and components before being folded and fitted to the dragonfly.

Credit: Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

The project is a collaboration between the CSDL, which has been developing the backpack that controls the dragonfly, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), where experts are identifying and enhancing "steering" neurons located in the dragonfly's nerve cord, inserting genes that make it more responsive to light.

"This system pushes the boundaries of energy harvesting, motion sensing, algorithms, miniaturization and optogenetics, all in a system small enough for an insect to wear," Wheeler said.

Even smaller than the dragonfly backpack are components created by CSDL called optrodes — optical fibers supple enough to wrap around the dragonfly's nerve cord, so that engineers can target only the neurons related to flight, CSDL representatives explained in a statement.

And in addition to controlling insect flight, the tiny, flexible optrodes could have applications in human medicine, Wheeler added.

"Someday these same tools could advance medical treatments in humans, resulting in more effective therapies with fewer side effects," Wheeler said. "Our flexible optrode technology provides a new solution to enable miniaturized diagnostics, safely access smaller neural targets and deliver higher precision therapies."

Tiny, Underwater Robots Offer Unprecedented View of World's Oceans

A group shot of the M-AUEs in Jaffe’s lab, awaiting deployment.

Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Robots the size of grapefruits are set to change the way scientists study the Earth's oceans, according to a new study.

Though space is often known as the "final frontier," the oceans of our home planet remain much of a mystery. Satellites have played a big role in that divide, as they explore the universe and send data back to scientists on Earth. But now, researchers have developed a kind of satellite for the oceans — autonomous miniature robots that can work as a swarm to explore oceans in a new way.

For their initial deployments, the Mini-Autonomous Underwater Explorers (M-AUEs) were able to record the 3D movements of the ocean's internal waves — a feat that traditional instruments cannot achieve. Study lead author Jules Jaffe, a research oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said current ocean measurements are akin to sticking a finger in a specific region of the water. [In Photos: The Wonders of the Deep Sea]

"We can move the finger around, but we're never in two places at the same time; so we basically have no sort of three-dimensional understanding of the ocean," Jaffe told Live Science. "By building this swarm of robots, we were in 16 places at the same time."

Each underwater robot is about the size and weight of a large grapefruit, Jaffe said. The bots are cylindrical and have an antenna on one end and measurement instrumentation on the other.

An artist's depiction of the near shore deployment of the robot swarm.

Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography

The swarm's first mission was to investigate how the ocean's internal waves moved. One of Jaffe's colleagues theorized that aspects of plankton's ecology is due to ocean currents pushing plankton together and pulling it back apart. However, scientists did not have the three-dimensional instrumentation capabilities to be able to verify those theories. Over the course of a few afternoons, Jaffe and his team deployed the M-AUEs in hopes of proving (or disproving) the theory.

"We could see this swarm of robots be pushed by currents, getting pushed together and then get pushed apart," Jaffe said. "It's almost like a breathing motion, but it occurred over several hours."

The theory was based on ocean physics, water density and internal wave dynamics, but the scientists had never seen the real-time movement of ocean water in 3D, Jaffe said.

And although their initial deployments were focused on the 3D mapping of internal wave dynamics, Jaffe said there are many other applications for the robot swarms.

For instance, with slightly different instrumentation, the robots could be deployed in an oil spill to help track the harmful toxins released. With underwater microphones, the swarm could also act as a giant ear, listening to whales and dolphins.

"We're not yet churning them out like a manufacturing facility, but we think we can answer a lot of questions about global ocean dynamics with what we have," Jaffe said of the couple of dozen robots the scientists have now. "And we are planning on a next generation, which hopefully would have more functionality and would maybe be even less expensive."

Details of the robot swarm were published online today (Jan. 24) in the journal Nature Communications.

Wireless 'RoboFly' Looks Like an Insect, Gets Its Power from Lasers

A new type of flying robot is so tiny and lightweight — it weighs about as much as a toothpick — it can perch on your finger. The little flitter is also capable of untethered flight and is powered by lasers.

This is a big leap forward in the design of diminutive airborne bots, which are usually too small to support a power source and must trail a lifeline to a distant battery in order to fly, engineers who built the new robot announced in a statement.

Their insect-inspired creation is dubbed RoboFly, and like its animal namesake, it sports a pair of delicate, transparent wings that carry it into the air. But unlike its robot precursors, RoboFly ain't got no strings to hold it down. Instead, the miniature bot uses a lightweight onboard circuit to convert laser light into enough electrical power to send it soaring. [New Flying Robots Take Cues From Airborne Animals]

A new type of flying robot is so tiny and lightweight — it weighs about as much as a toothpick — it can perch on your finger. The little flitter is also capable of untethered flight and is powered by lasers.

This is a big leap forward in the design of diminutive airborne bots, which are usually too small to support a power source and must trail a lifeline to a distant battery in order to fly, engineers who built the new robot announced in a statement.

Their insect-inspired creation is dubbed RoboFly, and like its animal namesake, it sports a pair of delicate, transparent wings that carry it into the air. But unlike its robot precursors, RoboFly ain't got no strings to hold it down. Instead, the miniature bot uses a lightweight onboard circuit to convert laser light into enough electrical power to send it soaring. [New Flying Robots Take Cues From Airborne Animals]

However, the cell doesn't store energy; the circuit must be within range of the fixed laser to generate power for the robot to take off, and once its cell moves beyond the laser's reach, RoboFly's flight is over. 

Tiny, highly maneuverable robots like RoboFly could quickly flutter into crevasses where bigger aerial drones simply wouldn't fit. One possible task for future versions of RoboFly could draw even more inspiration from flies — particularly, their talent for tracking down "smelly things," study co-author Sawyer Fuller, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, said in the statement.

"I'd really like to make one that finds methane leaks," he said. "You could buy a suitcase full of them, open it up, and they would fly around your building looking for plumes of gas coming out of leaky pipes. If these robots can make it easy to find leaks, they will be much more likely to be patched up, which will reduce greenhouse [gas] emissions."