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Scale Model Robot Bee Tests Flight Theories

Friday, 25 July 2008

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Scale Model Robot Bee Tests Flight Theories

Written by William Cox

Tuesday, 29 November 2005

Guardian Unlimited has a short piece on Michael Dickinson's lab at California Institute of Technology, where he researches bees and other flying insects abilities to fly. Here's an older video of Dickinson telling why he studies flies. In some of their latest research:

They found that a honeybee typically flaps its one-centimetre-long wings 240 times a second, each beat covering an arc of only 90 degrees. Other insects flap at no more than 200 times a second, with each stroke beating over a 165-degree arc.

The constructed a robotic scale model of the fly's wing and found that the maximum thrust happened at the end, middle, and start of the flapping motion.

Dickinson hopes to create a fully robotic, life-size bee for military applications. The thought of these doing surveillance is even scarier than the spy drones from Honeywell that everyone was talking about.

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Comments
Written by Brother Chuck on 2007-06-27 23:46:03
What a wonderful thing you are doing for the technological growth and advancement of this type of technology. As a beekeeper, a robtic Queen bee needs to be designed capable of bringing swarms out of hives in buildings into a super.

Think about it...
Would be a great project and would render great help in such cases. And save home owners alot of money for damages to remove bees otherwise without pesticides. We are trying to save our bees. Pesticides and the general public are not bee friendly. But, unfortunately the general public does not understand, "Kill the bees and food production goes way down"

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