The emergence of new polymeric materials that are responsive to various external stimuli has opened up a host of new opportunities for researchers to create soft robots controlled by wireless technology. In a fairly short period of time, a number of tiny devices that can walk, swim and jump have been created, but so far no one has been able to make them fly.
The Light Robots group at the University of Tampere is working on this problem. And the result of their work is a robot called FAIRY (Flying Aero-robots based on lIght Responsive materials assembly). This tiny robot resembling a dandelion seed umbrella is made of the lightest polymer, it is able to fly using the energy of air currents, and it is controlled by light.
Under the influence of light emitted by a laser or LED, the thin threads of the FAIRY robot, which weighs only 1.2 mg, bend, changing its shape and aerodynamic performance. By controlling the flow of light, it is possible to make the robot perform sweeps, change its direction, change its speed, and perform fully controlled takeoffs and landings.
In the near future, researchers will focus on optimizing the material's sensitivity to light, which will allow the FAIRY robot to operate in sunlight. In parallel, the structure of the robot will be redesigned so that it can carry microelectronic devices or biochemical complexes.
Once the aforementioned problems are solved, the FAIRY robots will open up a range of possible applications, the main of which is considered to be conducting artificial pollination.
"In the future, millions of such artificial 'dandelion seeds' carrying pollen will be dispersed by natural winds and then guided by light to plants waiting to be pollinated," the researchers wrote, "This could have a huge impact on agriculture, which is facing the loss of natural pollinators due to global warming."
Before all that, however, the researchers have several problems to solve. It remains to be seen, how will it be possible to direct each particular robot precisely to the center of the flower of the pollinated plant? How will it be possible to reassemble and reuse such robots, or is it better to make them disposable and biodegradable? Solving these problems requires close cooperation between material scientists and specialists working in the field of micro-robotics.