Bumblebees are clumsy flyers. It is estimated that a foraging bee strikes a flower every second, which over time damages its wings. Bumblebees can still fly even though they have many small tears or holes in their wings. Aerial work, on the other hand, is not so stable. Drill holes in a robot’s blade motors or cut off part of its propeller and it’s more likely to crash into the ground.

Inspired by the resilience of bumblebees, MIT researchers developed repair techniques that allowed the insect-sized flying creature to power its wings but still severely damage the flying actuators, or artificial muscles, in an efficient manner.

They optimized these artificial muscles so that the robot could better isolate imperfections and handle minor damage, such as tiny holes in the actuator. In addition, they demonstrated a new method of laser repair that could help the business recover from serious damage, such as a fire burning a device.

Using their method, the damaged robot was able to maintain its flight-level performance after 10 needles were inserted into one of its artificial muscles, and the actuator was still able to function after a large hole was burned into it. The repair techniques allowed the study to continue flying even after the researchers had cut off 20% of the wingtip.

MIT researchers have developed elastic artificial muscles that could allow flying robots in insect scales to effectively restore flight performance after severe damage. Image credit: Yi-Xuan Xiao, Suhan Kim and Yufeng Chen

In this way, swarms of small robots can better perform tasks in harsh environments, such as conducting a search mission in a collapsing building or a dense forest.

“We have spent a lot of time understanding the dynamics of soft artificial muscles, and with a new production method and a new understanding, we can show a level of resistance to damage compared to insects. We are very happy about this. However, insects are one of us in that they can lose up to 40% of their wings and still fly. We still have a lot of work to do,” says Kevin Chen, D. Reid Weedon Senior Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), head of the Software and Microrobotics Laboratory at the Electronics Research Laboratory (RLE). and senior author of the paper published in Science Robotics these Recent developments.