This small, luminous creature looks like it has sprung from a fairytale world. The project it belongs to is aptly named FAIRY. But instead of a fairy, this is a tiny, flying robot.
For some time now, engineers have been able to use so-called functional polymers to build small robots that can walk, swim and jump. These polymers can change reversibly and thus adapt to their environment. So far, however, no one has succeeded in making a robot made of this material fly.
However, researchers from the working group for light robots at the Finnish University of Tampere have now made it: They developed a new robot model that can fly powered by wind and is controlled by light. They orientated themselves on the structure of the dandelion seed. Due to its high porosity and low weight of only about 1.2 milligrams, the robot can easily hover in the air. By changing its shape, it can also manually adapt to wind direction and strength.
“We can then control the fairy robot with a light source, such as a laser beam or an LED,” explains Hao Zeng, leader of the research group. Engineers are currently concentrating on further improving the robot model. In the future, it could also carry microelectronic devices such as GPS and sensors. “It sounds like science fiction, but the experiments show that the robot represents an important step towards artificial pollination,” explains Zeng.
In the future, millions of these tiny fairy robots could be used to spread pollen, scientists envision. They would first be freely distributed by the wind and then directed by light to specific areas with plants. There, the robots would distribute the pollen to the flowers. “This would have a huge impact on agriculture worldwide, as pollinator loss has become a serious threat to biodiversity and food production,” says Zeng.