"Insect robot" can fly can swim

In 1939, a Russian engineer proposed the concept of a "flying submarine" to make a seamless transition from the air to the water, but for decades there has been little success in design precedent. Recently, the official website of Harvard University of the United States said that its micro robotics laboratory took the design of flying submarines one step forward. The flying bees designed by them, that is, "insect robots" can fly both in the air and in the water.

The design of the flying submarine is facing "conflicting" challenges. The aircraft needs larger wings to provide lift, while the underwater vehicle needs to reduce the surface area to reduce drag. Engineers at Harvard University have found inspiration in the design of the puffins, the gorilla of the most cattle in the world, traveling freely between the air and the water.

At the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Germany, Chen Kaiwen, a micro robotics lab at Harvard University, was the first author's dissertation to be named Best Student Paper Award. Through various theoretical, computational and experimental studies, Chen Kai-wen's team found that Puff puffer dynamics are very similar to flapping wing dynamics in the air and in water. In both cases, the wings swing back and forth with the only difference being the swing speed .

The research team therefore designed the first machine-bee to fly and swim, smaller than a paper clip, with up to 120 beats per minute on its tiny wings. But it is so small and so light in weight that there is simply no way to break the surface tension. To overcome this obstacle, the machine bees hover over the water at an angle, temporarily turning the engine off, and then sinking into the water to dive.

The density of water is the second hurdle facing machine bees. The second author, Farrell Herbling, explains that the density of water is 1000 times that of air, and that if the frequency of incitement by the bee's wings is unadjusted, it can easily be destroyed. To this end, the research team reduced this frequency from 120 to 9 per second, while maintaining the motivation of the incitement and the same hinge design.

While these designs ensure a seamless transition of the machine bees from the air to the water, the reverse is not possible because sufficient lift is not yet produced when coming out of the water, which is exactly what the research team needs to overcome in the next step.

Chen Kai-wen said the analysis of flapping motion is not limited to insect-sized micro-aircraft, the theory has the potential to be used to design a larger bionic robot.

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