A wireless controlled robotic insect with ultrafast untethered running speeds.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38719823.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-47812-5 and PMC identifier 11078929.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Running speed degradation of insect-scale (less than 5 cm) legged microrobots after carrying payloads has become a bottleneck for microrobots to achieve high untethered locomotion performance. In this work, we present a 2-cm legged microrobot (BHMbot, BeiHang Microrobot) with ultrafast untethered running speeds, which is facilitated by the complementary combination of bouncing length and bouncing frequency in the microrobot's running gait. The untethered BHMbot (2-cm-long, 1760 mg) can achieve a running speed of 17.5 BL s<sup>-1</sup> and a turning centripetal acceleration of 65.4 BL s<sup>-2</sup> at a Cost of Transport of 303.7 and a power consumption of 1.77 W. By controlling its two front legs independently, the BHMbot demonstrates various locomotion trajectories including circles, rectangles, letters and irregular paths across obstacles through a wireless control module. Such advancements enable the BHMbot to carry out application attempts including sound signal detection, locomotion inside a turbofan engine and transportation via a quadrotor.