For a long time, scientific engineers have been unable to fabricate micro aerial robot flies that can match the amazing flight capabilities of three-quarter flies – the most amazing flying insects in nature. Were it possible to fabricate these micro aerial robot flies, they would be efficient enough to go for long missions and could therefore be used for a variety of tasks including spying, rescue missions in collapsed buildings as well as mine detection.

For a long time, the conventional wisdom amongst biologists and engineers has been that micro aerial robot flies that fly like airplanes and helicopters use up much more energy than micro aerial robot flies that fly like advanced insects such as flies. Prior to this, the belief was that the basic flapping wings at the small scale of the insects wasted less energy during the generation of lift. This is the idea on which the development of fly-sized micro aerial robot flies is based.

For this study to develop the micro aerial robot flies, scientists used a giant robot fly which was submerged in a tank of oil in order to test whether flies use up less energy to hover than would a micro helicopter outfitted with a flying wing. The scientists were surprised to find out that a spinning fly wing generated the same amount of lift as did the flapping wing, while using up only half of the energy needed to keep the wing moving. This showed that micro aerial robot flies, which hover like flies do, can save up to fifty percent of energy if they swing their insect wing around like a helicopter blade. These findings on micro aerial robot flies should lead to new, more energy efficient micro aerial robot flies designs and increased energy efficiency in the spinning motion of helicopter blades.

Engineers believed that micro aerial robot flies would need to fly like a fly does in order to be energy efficient. But this is no longer the case as both the spinning and flapping insect wings may generate much more lift than predicted by aerodynamic theory.

Whereas, flies can fly tirelessly for hours, the human micro batteries can only keep these micro aerial robot flies aloft for only a few seconds or minutes. As such, because of their effective form of energy storage, flies are much less dependent on energy efficiency than even the best of the micro aerial robot flies. Scientists are therefore hoping to continue trying to understand flies so as to improve the micro aerial robot flies designs.

For more please visit http://www.bharatbook.com/Market-Research-Reports/Nanotechnology-in-the-Energy-Industry-Applications-and-Market-Potential.html