How MIT Researchers Mimic the Biological Mechanics of Insects to Make Their Miniature Robots Fly

Derek Muller of Veritasium visited the Robotics Lab at MIT to find out how researchers are designing their miniature robots to fly. As it turns out, these robots cannot fly like a bird, instead due to their relative size, the wings must be able to flutter really fast to hold up their own weight, like an insect. So they employ the same mechanics that insects use.

So these bots fly but not like birds I mean, they don’t soar. Instead, they have to use a whole lot more energy, flapping their wings hundreds of times per second. So why do they do that? Well, it comes down to this scale phenomenon. Larger objects typically have less surface are relative to their volume and that’s important.