Researchers at Harward University have demonstrated an insect robot achieving autonomous flight using closed loop control in vertical axis. They think that this approach can be used to enable autonomous flight on all 3 axis. A closed loop system is a control mechanism that uses feedback to control states or outputs of a dynamical system. To design a fully autonomous robot, even though in just vertical axis, the researchers had to deal with aerodynamics, sensors, actuators and other factors at the same time. Using swarms of fully autonomous insects would enable us to do many different tasks in a controlled manner, such as artificial pollination, exploring hazardous environments, biological exploration and many more. To read the original story and to see a video of the robot, see here.

  insect