Mark Cutkosky, professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University and an expert in bio-inspired devices, said that several trends are combining to make small autonomous fliers increasingly practical -- from large drones, to small quadrotors, and finally to flying microrobots.
Microprocessors and sensors are shrinking steadily and consuming less power even as they become more capable. Actuators that move parts on flying devices are also getting smaller -- although there are some basic energy principles that make it harder for them to shrink in the same way as computers and sensors.
New fabrication processes have made it increasingly possible to produce small, complex and precise mechanisms like those needed for the nano-bee flier, Cutkosky said.
"The various pieces of the technology that the authors describe and analyze in detail have all existed and been demonstrated," Cutkosky told DNews in an e-mail. "However, the authors bring them together in a new and particularly compelling application and demonstration."
Mike Tolley, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California San Diego, likes the idea of electrostatic adhesion for small flying vehicles.
"It does require high voltages, however, so do the piezoelectric actuators they are using to drive the flapping of the MAV's wings," said Tolley, who is also a former graduate student of the paper's co-author.
"Based on the experiments that the authors have described, it seems clear to me that this approach is practical and will work on a wide variety of surfaces.," Tolley said.
Robert Wood, professor at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and a co-author on the paper said the micro-flier can be used for search and rescue missions, surveillance and exploring hazardous environments, perhaps using a swarm to cover a given area.
"Basically any situation where you want to have low cost and distributed sensing but would be too difficult or too dangerous for a human," Wood said.