Researchers from Washington State University were able to develop a robotic bee that is capable of fully flying in all directions.
Robotic Bee
Science Daily reports that the robotic bee is armed with four wings that consist of mylar and carbon fiber. It also has four different lightweight actuators for controlling each wing.
This Bee++ prototype is the first to stably fly in all and any direction. Its movement includes twisting motions called yaw. The robot can also fully pull off the six-degree free movement that is typically displayed by a flying insect.
The novel work was reported in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics journal. For over three decades, researchers have been trying to come up with artificial insects that fly, as lead researcher Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia notes. Pérez-Arancibia is a Flaherty associate professor from the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at WSU, during the ongoing IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Read more at sciencetimes.com