Ultra-Lightweight Cyborg Insect: Sideways walking of remote-controlled living beetle with a miniature backpack

Abstract

Cyborg insect also referred as insect-machine hybrid robot or living legged robot consists of a living insect platform and an electronic backpack mounted on. The small size, insignificant load and magnificent walking ability of the insect make this hybrid system a strong candidate for search and rescue mission which requires high locomotory capabilities to cope with the complexity and unpredictability terrains and small size to access the debris of post-disaster sites. Such requirement drives the necessity to introduce more controllable mobility to the cyborg insects for developing efficient maneuver plans. Here, we demonstrate the control of sideways and forward walking in an ultra-lightweight terrestrial living legged robot by emulating the touch responses of mechanoreceptors on the insect's elytra using the electrical stimulation; the maximum velocity induced of the two motions is up to more than 30 mm/s. In addition, the elicited sideways and forward walking are found to be graded by tuning the frequency of electrical stimulation of the elytra that increasing the frequency will speed up the sideways locomotion and slow down the forward walking. Besides complementing the controllability of the cutting-edge living legged robots, such graded response provides the potential to precisely navigate the insect toward the development of highly-accurate-navigation cyborg insects for search and rescue.