Tiny robots developed at the University of Washington might look like leaves that could have fallen from a tree, but the control the devices use in getting to the ground is what sets them apart.
The little “microfliers” use a form of origami called the Miura-ori fold, named for Japanese astrophysicist Kōryō Miura, who developed the method for folding a flat sheet of paper into a smaller area.
After being dropped by a drone, the devices go from flat and tumbling to the ground, to folded and falling straight down. The timing of the transition from flat to folded is controlled by a few methods: an onboard pressure sensor (estimating altitude), an onboard timer or a Bluetooth signal.
Each device weighs about 400 milligrams and can travel about 100 yards when dropped from a height of 131 feet. The microfliers carry an onboard battery-free actuator, a solar power-harvesting circuit and controller to trigger the shape changes in mid-air.
The microfliers have the capacity to carry onboard sensors to survey temperature, humidity and other data while soaring, to measure various environmental and atmospheric conditions as they descend. A network of such devices could help researchers paint a picture of what’s happening for different applications, including digital agriculture and monitoring climate change, according to the researchers’ website.
The team published results of its research on Wednesday in Science Robotics.
“Using origami opens up a new design space for microfliers,” said co-senior author Vikram Iyer, UW assistant professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, in a statement. He said the method “highly energy efficient” and said it “allows us to have battery-free control over microflier descent, which was not possible before.”
Iyer, a former GeekWire Geek of the Week, has been involved in several high-profile projects at the UW using tiny robots featuring low power and low weight.
- He helped attach a tiny robotic camera to the back of a live beetle in 2020.
- He put tiny tracking technology on Asian giant hornets in Washington state to help find their nests.
- And before origami became their latest technique, Iyer and researchers were mimicking dandelion seeds riding the wind.
Additional co-authors on the paper are Kyle Johnson and Vicente Arroyos, both UW doctoral students in the Allen School; Amélie Ferran, a UW doctoral student in the mechanical engineering department; Raul Villanueva, Dennis Yin and Tilboon Elberier, who completed this work as UW undergraduate students studying electrical and computer engineering; Alberto Aliseda, UW professor of mechanical engineering; Sawyer Fuller, UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering; and Shyam Gollakota, UW professor in the Allen School.
Watch Johnson demonstrate how to fold a paper microflier in this video:
