This project will demonstrate an insect-sized flying robot powered by combustion, with a hard exoskeleton and integrated soft actuators. The premise is that structure, propulsion, snd control inspired by the insect musculoskeletal system will produce more efficient and robust microrobots. The analogy becomes even more clear with the realization that, like most animals, insects chemically burn glucose (a hydrocarbon) for muscle actuation. Conservative estimates suggest that the use of combustion to power flying microrobots will allow untethered and autonomous operation for greater than 30 minutes in idealized conditions, enabling vastly more effective application to search and rescue, inspection of infrastructure, and distributed sensor networks. In addition, this project will have broad impacts in education, harnessing children's natural interest in insect biology towards a STEM outcome of understanding robotics.
The combustion of hydrocarbons can have up to fifty times the volumetric energy density of lithium polymer batteries and is a potential power source for untethered robots, even at the scale of insects. This research is to show how combustion-powered actuation of a soft, artificial muscle can generate sufficiently high frequencies and forces to power flapping-wing micro-aerial vehicles. Typical combustion-powered machines require heavy and complex transmission systems to effectively use chemical energy. Instead, this research will develop soft, elastomeric bladders that expand during combustion, and serve as both engine and transmission -- drastically reducing complexity and weight. Flying robots are the target application for this project due to the extreme energetic demands of flight at small scales but the results will be broadly applicable to other power-demanding autonomous systems. Furthermore, the small scale of the envisioned robot will produce innovations in multi-scale multi-material manufacturing. The work will take place in three tasks: (i) fabrication and testing of a microscale soft engine; (ii) integration of the combustion chamber with a flapping-wing robot platform; (iii) development of additional technologies required for autonomous flight and performing tethered controlled flight experiments.
