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IPFS News Link • Robots and Artificial Intelligence

Army lab asks help building wing-flapping robot fly

• http://www.computerworld.com-Kevin Fogarty

Researchers at the U.S. Army are taking advantage of an unusually unclassified approach to military systems development to ask for help turning a clever robotic fly into an almost undetectable spy.

The robotic flies are – or will be – semi-autonomous robots that look like real bugs and fly using wings that flap without being controlled by a motor.

Instead, the wings are made from a material known as PZT that generates an electrical charge when it's deformed – and changes its own shape when electricity is applied to it.

The material PZT – lead zirconate titanate – is a ceramic perovskite with strong piezoelectric properties, meaning that it develops an electrical charge under pressure, or when a temperature difference develops between two surfaces.

That property has made them popular with researchers looking for ways to power nano-scale machines so small that there would be no room for connections to a battery, let alone a battery.

esearchers at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Adelphi, Md. have already come up with one set of"insect-inspired" flying microbots designed to accompany soldiers in the field as remote-controlled scouts small enough to go anywhere and able to navigate on their own with or without GPS and to carry laser range finders, cameras, altimeters and other sensors able to send back critical information. Most are quadrotor fliers that use ultrasonic motors developed at the Army Research Lab that are as small as three millimeters in diameter.


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