American scientists, Dr Kevin Ma and his team led by Dr Robert Wood, have created a flying robot as small as a fly. Dubbed the “robo-fly”, the robot is built from carbon fibre, weighs less than a gram and has “super-fast electronic muscles to power its wings.”

According to the Harvard scientists who developed the robo-fly, their tiny machine could be used in rescue situations to locate individuals in needs of help, as the craft will be small enough to get through tight spaces. Dr Ma said:

We could envision these robots being used for search-and-rescue operations to search for human survivors under collapsed buildings or [in] other hazardous environments.

Robo-fly’s wings beat at an estimated 120 times a second. This rapid wing movement was achieved using piezoelectric material which contracts when the voltage is on.

We get it to contract and relax, like biological muscle.

It will be a few more years before full integration is possible… Until then, this research project continues to be very captivating work because of its similarity to natural insects. It is a demonstration of how far human engineering ingenuity has reached, to be mimicking natural systems.

[Source: CNN News]