Researchers create robotic bee that uses solar power to fly

It has been a while since scientists created robot bees but this time researchers have created a new type of tiny robot bee that is powered by only solar energy to fly.

Researchers at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab have made the latest version of their already created RoboBee, which they call as the RoboBee X-Wing. The old version of RoboBee, inspired by the biology of a bee, is a very small robotic bee that contains two wings and has to rely on power in order to make it fly.

The newer RoboBee X-Wing, however, features solar cells along with an extra pair of wings for more stable and mostly autonomous flight, reported Futurism.

First wireless flying robotic insect takes its initial flight

Video Courtesy: NPG Press

Nonetheless, the robotic bee comes with its own limitations. One of the major problems is that it can only uphold its flight for hardly half a second and only indoors, and is also too weak to carry a battery. The ‘solar power’ currently used to power the bee was from lamps placed above the robot to shine down on its solar cells.

“Moving from two wings to four wings was really a factor of, how do we increase our lift without also increasing our power consumption,” E. Farrell Helbling, co-author of the study published in Nature, told Wired. “So we can still stay within this regime where we can carry onboard power with such a limited payload capacity.”

The team believes that the small-scale engineering for the RoboBee X-Wing could also be incorporated into other technologies. “Yes, it’s interesting for our individual robot,” Helbling said, “but these things could also be applied to other small devices, like medical devices, or other areas where you want something to be in the centimeter or millimeter scale. I think it’s really an area to explore.”