ROBO FLY

Will discuss Robo Fly which is being developed at University of California, Berkeley

Known affectionately as "robofly," the gadget is exactly what its name implies: a flying robot about the size of a housefly. It even looks a bit like a fly, although it will have four wings instead of two and one glassy eye instead of two beady ones. Uncle Sam, who is bankrolling the project to the tune of $2.5 million, wants to see robofly airborne by 2004


why are fly robots creating such a buzz?
Flies, for all their faults, are outstanding pilots. They can take off and land in any direction, even upside down. They can change course in just 30-thousandths of a second. And they process information at speeds that make a supercomputer look like an abacus.


Specifications
Robofly will weigh about 43 milligrams -- roughly the weight of a fat housefly. Its body will be made of paper-thin stainless steel and its wings of Mylar, which looks and feels a lot like Saran Wrap. Robofly will be powered by the sun, and a tiny device called a piezoelectric actuator will flap its four puny wings 180 times a second.


How does it fly?
Dickinson discovered that insects use three different wing motions that, taken together, create backspin and air vortices that create lift. The complexity of the movement means robofly will need four wings to do what flies do with two.


Present work
Controlling the robofly once its airborne.


Future
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who are developing tiny gyroscopes just one millimeter in diameter. Caltech researcher Kris Pister is developing for "smart dust" which will pack sensors, communicators and computing power onto tiny silicon motes


To learn more go here http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~flymanmd/