Robotic Houseflies to Take Flight Within Five Years

Flying Robots Have Intelligence, Surveillance Uses

MAREN LANE / Daily Californian 7may03

The science fiction fantasy of flying robots the size of houseflies may become a reality within five years, if UC Berkeley researchers have their way.

UC Berkeley electrical engineering and computer science professor Ronald Fearing has been working with a team of electrical, mechanical and material sciences engineers in collaboration with biologists to develop a tiny flying robot that will be able to hover and maneuver in the air like a real fly.

Fearing said the flying robot could be used for military surveillance, data collection, and search and rescue, among several possible uses.

"We've also thought of things in an indoor environment—having flies that do indoor environment monitoring," Fearing said. "Are rooms warm enough, cold enough? Is there enough fresh air?"

The project began in 1997, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research.

Fearing said the project began as a collaboration between the engineering and the biological departments to "try to build robots that were much more like natural animals."

EECS graduate student Srinath Avadhanula has worked under Fearing on the flying insect project for three years. He commented on the commercial viability of the robot, which could have low production costs.

"The nice application is that it makes pretty good toys," Avadhanula said. "(The fly)'ll be pretty cheap."

Fearing said that he was not trying to mimic nature but rather was trying to extract principles from it for human application.

Mark Cutkosky, professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, is familiar with Fearing's research and has worked on biologically inspired robots himself. Cutkosky said that Fearing's group was at the forefront of creating such tiny robots.

"Ron's group is the foremost group in the world in making a small flying robot," Cutkosky said. "There is a lot of very clever design and fabrication to create a structure that can flap its wings and fly on that scale."

At this point, a prototypical flying robot has been created that weighs under a gram and has wings capable of moving.

Fearing said it will be several years before his team produced a fly capable of maneuvering in the air on its own.

source: http://www.dailycal.org/article.asp?id=11505 16jul03