A Cyborg Insect Reveals a Function of a Muscle in Free Flight.

ABSTRACT: While engineers put lots of effort, resources, and time in building insect scale micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that fly like insects, insects themselves are the real masters of flight. What if we would use living insect as platform for MAV instead? Here, we reported a flight control via electrical stimulation of a flight muscle of an insect-computer hybrid robot, which is the interface of a mountable wireless backpack controller and a living beetle. The beetle uses indirect flight muscles to drive wing flapping and three major direct flight muscles (basalar, subalar, and third axilliary (3Ax) muscles) to control the kinematics of the wings for flight maneuver. While turning control was already achieved by stimulating basalar and 3Ax muscles, electrical stimulation of subalar muscles resulte

SUBMITTER: Vo-Doan TT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9494732 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature