Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are one step closer to perfecting the artificial aerial critters. In a paper published March 15, a group of researchers at MIT showed that using resilient muscle-like actuators and self-repairing technology can vastly improve the robustness of robotic bees.
“Insects flying are incredibly difficult to understand,” said Kevin Chen, an assistant professor at MIT, head of the institute’s Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory, and the senior author of the paper. “The aerodynamic principles that insects use are very different than, for example, airplanes or other flying objects. So trying to build a scale flying robot definitely gives us tools to understand the insects.”
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