MIT researchers have developed more advanced bug-like robots that could one day pollinate indoor plants. The weight of a paperclip, these robotic bees can remain airborne for nearly 17 minutes, Reuters reported. The work was published in Science Robotics.
"Since our robot looks like an insect and it's real lightweight and small, if you can really precisely control the robot, we might be able to do something on top of flowers or leaves, which really requires very delicate interactions," said Suhan Kim, co-lead author and electrical engineering and computer science researcher.
The goal is to reach 10,000 seconds — or 166 minutes — of flight time and dial in the precision so the artificial bugs can land on and take off from the center of a flower, MIT News noted. This iteration is already more agile and durable than previous robots, which had problems with lift because of an eight-wing design.
"Compared to the old robot, we can now generate control torque three times larger than before, which is why we can do very sophisticated and very accurate path-finding flights," senior author and head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory, Kevin Chen, said.
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