Marco Angelo D'Souza
In one the rarest discovery of its kind, researchers, comprising of an academic teams from UC Berkeley and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University have discover a key muscle that controls insect flight.
Using a specially-created strapped-on computers, the research teams have found that a muscle--the coleopteran third axillary sclerite (3Ax)--originally assumed to control only the folding of insect wings also happens to be central to in-flight steering.
The hi-tech backpacks consist of an off-the-shelf microcontroller and a built-in wireless receiver and transmitter. Six electrodes are connected to the beetle’s optic lobes and flight muscles, and the entire 1.5gm apparatus is powered by a 3.9-volt micro lithium battery.
The critters measure about 6cm in length and weigh 8gms--a tad more than a 10-rupee coin.
Armed with this newfound information, they were able to use the hardware augmented on the insects to wirelessly transmit signals to that muscle, enabling them to precisely steer the insect left and right using a wireless controller.
“This is a demonstration of how tiny electronics can answer interesting, fundamental questions for the larger scientific community,” said Michel Maharbiz, an associate professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the study’s principal investigator.
“Biologists trying to record and study flying insects typically had to do so with the subject tethered. It had been unclear if tethering interfered with the insect’s natural flight motions,” he said.
Drones did they say?
