Bugs, the bane of Sunday afternoon
picnics, are opening a new horizon for researchers who are
mimicking some of their more extraordinary attributes in a wave
of research that may save lives in the future.
A digital camera with 200 lenses that mimics the compound
eyes of ants may help improve endoscopes, the tiny cameras
doctors use to explore the insides of patients. A tiny robot
that borrows the aerial prowess of a house fly may one day help
find injured victims buried in rubble after disasters.
The two technologies, announced separately in science
journals this week, are the latest advances that use biological
systems as models to design materials and machines. While
copying nature has long been a staple of human innovation,
recent technology advances that let scientists look more closely
at insects and stronger collaboration between engineers and
biologists have set off a wave of new discoveries.
“The walls that divided the life sciences and the physical
sciences are sort of becoming transparent, so we’re trading
ideas,” said Kevin Ma, a mechanical engineering graduate
student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who
helped design the robotic fly. “That also helps with the trend
toward biologically inspired technologies, because of the cross-
pollination of the fields.”
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development is already in
the process of commercializing some of the underlying
technologies, the university said in a statement.
The bug-eyed camera, about the size of half a grape, was
reported this week in the journal Nature. It’s constructed of
200 interconnected rubbery lenses, which together allow a 160-
degree field of view. The lenses, linked together in a sheet,
can twist and stretch, allowing them to be formed into different
shapes for different views, said John Rogers, a study author and
a professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Infinite Field
In traditional photography, lenses can focus only on one
distance, with a decrease in sharpness on either side of that
point. In the compound eye, the depth of field is infinite, so
nothing is out of focus, Rogers said in a telephone interview.
This may one day provide a boon to camera-guided surgeries,
requiring less movement of the camera to provide resolution for
doctors, or making more-effective surveillance cameras, he said.
“It’s a gut interest on my own part, in insects and the
eyes of dragonflies,” said Rogers, who also plans to explore
the eyes of shrimp and lobsters. “Insects are well-engineered
at the eye and the machinery for flight.”
There are a number of hurdles to get the design into
commercial production, Rogers said. The next step will be to
increase the number of lenses, which would allow for very high
resolution.
New Technologies
The bug-eyed camera and the robotic fly reflect new
technologies that have helped make studying nature easier,
according to Sherry Ritter, a research and education specialist
at Biomimicry 3.8, a Missoula, Montana-based consulting firm.
“One reason we can learn so much more than we have in the
past is because we’re looking at micro and nano scales,” Ritter
said in a telephone interview. “We have really slow-motion
video now that shows how wings move, and at the micro scale, we
can see how they’re attached.”
Getting the robot into the air took more than a decade of
work, Harvard’s Ma said in a telephone interview. Its creation,
though, offers two immediate benefits, the researchers wrote:
Biologists get a new model to study insect flight, and engineers
are introduced to some non-traditional materials that may be
used to construct other tiny machines.
Flies were particularly appealing as a model because they
maneuver so deftly, as anyone who’s tried to swat one can
attest, Ma said.
Ceramic Muscles
The robot, which uses about the same amount of power in
flight as a living insect, flaps its wings using strips of
ceramic that serve as muscles, expanding and contracting when an
electric field is applied.
For joints, the robot has slim hinges of plastic, and a
control system commands the motions in the flapping wings,
according to the report yesterday in Science. Each wing is
independent.
One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to
manufacture materials at the proper size. Ma said. Ultimately,
the group used laser-cut materials that folded like origami into
the tiny machines.
The prototypes also remain tethered by a slender power
cable, as there are no immediate solutions for energy storage
small enough to be part of the insect’s body. Fuel cells must be
developed before the robots can fly independently, the
researchers said in their report. They are also studying how to
add a camera or sensors.
‘Practical Applications’
“Of course, practical applications are a far way out, but
if we can imagine autonomous robots of this size, they could
help search-and-rescue operations look for human survivors in
hazardous environments,” Ma said.
Along with search and rescue, applications from the project
include the development of a manufacturing process that may
enable a new class of complex medical devices, the researchers
said.
The two initiatives are hardly the first pieces of
technology to borrow from nature.
Famously, Velcro Industries BV fasteners were invented by
Swiss engineer George de Mestral in 1941 after he noticed burrs
caught on his dog. The burrs had hundreds of microscopic hooks
that fastened onto equally small loops in the dog’s fur. The
technology has since been used by the U.S. National Aeronautics
and Space Administration to keep astronauts’ dinner plates from
floating away from them in orbit.
Now, though, there’s new energy in the field, according to
Ritter, at Biomimicry 3.8. “This whole bioinspired, biomimicry
field is about collaborating with people you’d never have
collaborated with in the past.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at
elopatto@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Reg Gale at
rgale5@bloomberg.net
Bug-Eyed Camera
University of Illinois and Beckman Institute via Bloomberg
Image of a digital camera with a hemispherical, compound design inspired by eyes found in the insect world.
Image of a digital camera with a hemispherical, compound design inspired by eyes found in the insect world. Source: University of Illinois and Beckman Institute via Bloomberg
Bug-Eyed Camera
University of Illinois and Beckman Institute via Bloomberg
The system incorporates an array of rubber microlenses and silicon photodetectors in a thin, stretchable sheet that can be inflated like a balloon to form the final hemispherical shape.
The system incorporates an array of rubber microlenses and silicon photodetectors in a thin, stretchable sheet that can be inflated like a balloon to form the final hemispherical shape. Source: University of Illinois and Beckman Institute via Bloomberg
Bug-Eyed Camera
Harvard University via Bloomberg
Robotic flies are shown next to a penny for scale. These imitation insects could one day aid in search and recovery efforts.
Robotic flies are shown next to a penny for scale. These imitation insects could one day aid in search and recovery efforts. Source: Harvard University via Bloomberg
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