What is robofly?

"Robofly" is a general name for any attempt at artificial flying machines on a scale of household size, with wings about 3 cm (around the thumb) and weight of about 100 milligrams. Several research efforts focused on this challenge and often drew inspiration from the biomechanics of real flies.

One of the first serious efforts to build Robofly was in the Biomimetic Millisystems laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. He started in 1998 and was still ongoing, the project was not yet successfully built by real robofly, although some scientists have worked on what eventually happened to the first successful robofly. The team also made numerous important observations and discoveries about the mechanics of insect flight. The finding that stainless steel lacked the necessary ratio of strength to weight, the team began to build carbon fiber prototypes in 2002. Because Robofly lacked a control system, it was a bound flight. Like many other efforts for robofly, Wood's work was financed by the Agency for the ExadTest Agency for Advanced Research Projects, Darpa. The United States Army tried to develop Roboflies for supervision purposes, although it would have many other applications.

Building roboflies is difficult for several reasons: Biomechanics of flying flight is not perfectly understood and components necessary to create prototypes are so small and strong that special manufacturing techniques are needed to create them. For successful Harvard Robofly was used laser micromachining carbon fibers and polymer components, with an accuracy of up to two microns.

Because roboflies are so small, tracking information they could pick up in the field would probably be very low, probably similar to visual signals that were picked up by flies in real life. Their small size would also prevent the road communication with nothing but very low performance requirements. To save on the space pPonytail, Robofly uses electroactive materials that bend in response to electric fields. Since 2008, scientists have been working on optimizing fly designs and their existing country proposals.