Braking and Body Angles Control of an Insect-Computer Hybrid Robot by Electrical Stimulation of Beetle Flight Muscle in Free Flight

TL;DR

This study demonstrates flight control of a living beetle using electrical stimulation of specific flight muscles, enabling maneuvers like braking, elevation, and yaw control in an insect-computer hybrid robot.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of controlling insect flight through electrical stimulation of subalar muscles, expanding capabilities of insect-based MAVs.

Findings

Electrical stimulation of subalar muscles enables braking and elevation control.

Stimulating subalar muscles induces yaw and roll maneuvers.

Combined stimulation affects pitch and decelerates flight.

Abstract

While engineers put lots of effort, resources, and time in building insect scale micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that fly like insects, insects themselves are the real masters of flight. What if we would use living insect as platform for MAV instead? Here, we reported a flight control via electrical stimulation of a flight muscle of an insect-computer hybrid robot, which is the interface of a mountable wireless backpack controller and a living beetle. The beetle uses indirect flight muscles to drive wing flapping and three major direct flight muscles (basalar, subalar and third axilliary (3Ax) muscles) to control the kinematics of the wings for flight maneuver. While turning control was already achieved by stimulating basalar and 3Ax muscles, electrical stimulation of subalar muscles resulted in braking and elevation control in flight. We also demonstrated around 20 degrees of contralateral yaw and roll by stimulating individual subalar muscle. Stimulating both subalar muscles lead to an increase of 20 degrees in pitch and decelerate the flight by 1.5 m/s2 as well as an induce an elevation of 2 m/s2.