Flight of the RoboBee

I think that I first saw a picture of this on Facebook, or some other social media site, and to be honest the only thing that went through my mind was that State Farm commercial, you remember the one, "if it's on the internet it must be true".

Well this time, and again seeing it on the internet, it is true, and very cool.



This technically isn't the first flight, since one did fly around last summer on a predetermined route, but this recent flight was the first 'controlled' flight of the microrobot.

"This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years. It's really only because of this lab's recent breakthroughs in manufacturing, materials, and design that we have even been able to try this. And it just worked, spectacularly well," said Robert Wood, leader of the engineering team which built RoboBee.

The real problem in development of the Robobee was the obvious fact; it is very small, weighing less than one tenth of one gram, so as you can imagine the parts associated with production are also extremely small and are all made 'À la carte'.

"We had to develop solutions from scratch, for everything. We would get one component working, but when we moved onto the next, five new problems would arise. It was a moving target," Wood said.

I wonder what exactly the intended use of the Robobee will eventually be? I have read on the internet that there is a drone army being built in Cambridge - It must be true.