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Tiny Robotic Bee Assembles Itself Like Pop-Up Book
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- alt_ 15y agoBeautiful work. Although, I'd recommend just reading the press release[1]. It is more in depth and better explains the accuracy and reliability they can achieve. I especially love seeing the bee in operation. Does anyone know by what mechanism the motion is generated? Edit: My best guess is piezoelectric actuators[2]. [1] http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/pop-up-flying-robots http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/pop-u... [2] http://micro.seas.harvard.edu/papers/Karpelson_ICRA09.pdf http://micro.seas.harvard.edu/papers/Karpelson_ICRA09.pdf
- brianbreslin 15y agoI'd love to see video of a swarm of these
- njharman 15y agoYou won't, unless it's CGI.
- alan_cx 15y agoWell, you might. IIRC, there is another group who have those micro helicopters working in a swarm like way. I assume convergence at some point in the not too distant future.
- Kiro 15y agoI presume you mean the Nano Quadrotors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4
- 51Cards 15y agoDisregarding the engineering of the bee itself (which is equally amazing) the fabrication process is brilliant. 2 things come to mind when I watch this. A. I live in the future. B. There are people out there far more intelligent than I. Consider my mind blown. I wonder if they are working on a method to power the bee for actual flight. Of course it has no control system either at this point. Off to read more. Thanks to the poster for the link.
- swombat 15y agoA. I live in the future. Indeed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyMdOT8YJgY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyMdOT8YJgY Enjoy.
- orborde 15y agoThis is intensely interesting but completely off topic.
- Lost_BiomedE 15y agoLook up Erik Demaine, winner of a 2003 MacArthur genius award. You may have seen him on the 'in between the folds' origami documentary. I have a feeling that this process has a lot to do with his past work in origami and algorithms. His website: http://erikdemaine.org http://erikdemaine.org Intro to folding: http://erikdemaine.org/folding/ http://erikdemaine.org/folding/
- jamesbritt 15y agoBetween the Folds is a great documentary. Amazing stuff, both artistically and in engineering.
- kiba 15y agoThey probably accomplish stuff faster than you but I don't think it's impossible for you to develop robots like those bees. It just that it required hard work chipping away at those little microproblems.
- karolist 15y agoThere's much leftover material that looks to be wasted. Is there any reason the block has to be this size? Can't the margins be smaller?
- alan_cx 15y agoLike everything, this will be refined over time. Give them a chance!!!!!!!
- withad 15y agoThey showed a lot of them grouped together into a sheet towards the end of the video, so I assume the hexagon was just a prototype or made specifically for demonstration. Although if you're talking about margins between them on the sheet, I'm not sure.
- icegreentea 15y agoLooks like this configuration would allow the highest density of units to be fabricated per given surface area. Notice that the hexagon is just barely larger than the wing span where they approach each other. Can't do the math now, but it's likely more space efficient to use the hexagon, than a plain rectangle. You'll need to use one of those shapes so you can tessellate without lose. The carbon fiber structure might not have to be continuous, though I suspect that it might play a role in positioning during fabrication.
- shtylman 15y agoThe Bee didn't assemble itself, nor did it look robotic to me yet as it was not even shown if it could fly or do other tasks. Very cool demo tho.
- MiguelHudnandez 15y agoThe bee is incidental. The real "product" here is is the manufacturing technique. It has enough technology, primarily built-in circuitry to turn electric current into motive force, to show that more complicated robotics are possible.