I've always been fascinated by fireflies perhaps because they aren't local to the West Coast they seem so very exotic. We saw them on our summer trips to Montreal and Quebec City. Richard loved them too and was disappointed when we had to tell him he wouldn't be seeing them at home. I would have never guessed in a million years that robots and fireflies would be connected.
MIT’s Latest Tiny Robot Invention Gets Its Inspiration from Fireflies |
| For many, fireflies bring about memories of late summer nights and childhood innocence. For one group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, though, the bioluminescent insects are the inspiration for their latest project: tiny robots that can fly and light up. The small devices, weighing a bit more than a paper clip, will hopefully one day serve in search-and-rescue missions, using their flashing lights to signal for help in remote or dangerous locations. “If you think of large-scale robots, they can communicate using a lot of different tools — Bluetooth, wireless, all those sorts of things. But for a tiny, power-constrained robot, we are forced to think about new modes of communication,” one of the engineers, Kevin Chen, said in a press release. And the robots’ similarities to real-life fireflies are numerous. In addition to being able to flash their lights on and off to communicate with each other, they have wings that can flap when voltage is applied. This was a pretty amazing fact I came across while reading about them. I think it would be rather disconcerting to see one of these! "The biggest fireflies are huge. Females of the Lamprigera firefly can grow to be the size of your palm. They are much larger than their male counterparts and lack wings. Two large light organs on their abdomen produce their characteristic glow." |
