Automaton

An article in today's WaPo discusses some odd dragonflies seen in New York City recently, which some of the witnesses say look "large for dragonflies" and suspiciously mechanical. Speculation is that they're robotic bugs spying for the US government -- of course, there's other speculation that they're just plain dragonflies, too. Don't be misled by the photo in the article (reproduced here); that's a picture from a lab at Harvard.

But after all the apparent warnings for the tinfoil hat brigade, the article does a nice of highlighting some of the ongoing research into robotic insects. Here's an interesting bit:

In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are inserting computer chips into moth pupae -- the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult -- and hatching them into healthy "cyborg moths."

The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs -- camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.

"You might recall that Gandalf the friendly wizard in the recent classic 'Lord of the Rings' used a moth to call in air support," DARPA program manager Amit Lal said at a symposium in August. Today, he said, "this science fiction vision is within the realm of reality."

Remember those strange dragonflies seen in New York City that some witnesses said looked suspiciously ... robotic? Well, we still don't know what those were.

But if you're into flying microrobots, you can't miss this month's Spectrum cover article, Fly, Robot Fly, written by one of the leading experts in the field, Robert Wood at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab:

There is no more rewarding moment for roboticists than when they first see their creations begin to twitch with a glimmer of life. For me, that moment of paternal pride came a year ago this month, when my artificial fly first flexed its wings and flew.

It began when I took a stick-thin winged robot, not much larger than a fingertip, and anchored it between two taut wires, rather like a miniature space shuttle tethered to a launchpad. Next I switched on the external power supply. Within milliseconds the carbon-fiber wings, 15 millimeters long, began to whip forward and back 120 times per second, flapping and twisting just like an actual insect's wings. The fly shot straight upward on the track laid out by the wires. As far as I know, this was the first flight of an insect-size robot.

Read Wood's full account of his work and see additional photos of this great little flying robot at Spectrum's web site.

Photos: Dan Saelinger and Randi Silberman for IEEE Spectrum

A strange-looking fly has been seen buzzing around the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. And we have the video.

It's the robotic fly built by Robert Wood and his colleagues at Harvard. Click here or on the image below to go to the video player:

Want to learn more? In "Fly, Robot Fly," Robert Wood describes how he built his artificial fly. This other article, "Fly Like a Fly" is about how real flies ... fly.

Spectrum reports that Caltech researchers are developing a MEMS robotic device to insert and position electrodes in the brain. The system could enhance the performance of neural prosthetics, which have proved hard to implant accurately. The researchers haven't built the device yet, but they've devised control algorithms to guide the miniature robots to make good neural connections. From the article:

The Caltech team has designed a system that would make the procedure more predictable by attaching a tiny MEMS-based motor to each electrode on a multichannel electrode array and using an algorithm to direct the electrodes to individual neurons.

[...]

As the electrodes are driven into the tissue, the software starts taking sample recordings to detect spikes of electrical activity at the electrode tip. When the software detects spikes, it moves forward in small increments and tracks how the signals change. After determining whether the signal has improved or gotten worse, the algorithm moves the electrode to a new position and does more recording and comparing, driving the electrode in further if necessary until it finds the best signal. If the signal wanes, the algorithm will automatically adjust the electrode position to improve the signal.