Does it have large blue eyes? Check. Are there four wings? Check. Does it have a long, shiny tail? Check.
Yep, the object before me appears to be a dragonfly. The only thing that gives the game away is the size. With a length of 44 centimeters, a wingspan of 63 cm and a weight of 175 grams, this is far bigger than any dragonfly I’ve seen before.
I had come to Esslingen, a town close to Stuttgart in southwest Germany. This is the base of Festo, the company behind the dragonfly-shaped robot known as the “BionicOpter,” a name coined by combining the words “bionic” and “helicopter.”
“OK, let’s give it a spin,” Heinrich Frontzek, the 56-year-old in charge of the development, shouts over to his engineer. On cue, the motor starts making a humming sound and the wings start to flap. Then it happens: The BionicOpter takes off from the engineer’s hand. For 30 magical seconds it flies freely around the large open glass-paneled room before returning to land back where it started.
Festo’s main line of business is the automation and streamlining of factory operations. It was founded in 1925 and now has regional offices in 61 countries, including Japan. It also has over 300,000 customers in 176 nations. In the 1990s, it adopted the concept “learning from nature” as one of the pillars of its research. Living creatures have developed the optimal capabilities to thrive in their natural environment. By studying such creatures, Festo believes, for example, it can learn how to better combine numerous complex functions, or how to improve energy efficiency.
But why dragonflies? In 2006, Festo set up the Bionic Learning Network with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and several other entities. It has since done research on fish fins, jellyfish propulsion and how penguins swim, among other things. Researchers then replicated what they had learned in robots.
In 2011, the Network created a flying “SmartBird” modeled on a herring gull. This yielded increased knowledge about the mechanisms governing two-winged flight. The Network then decided to try working with four wings, hence the dragonfly.
Unlike birds, dragonflies can execute sharp mid-air turns, hover and even fly backward.
“A dragonfly is trained to catch flies in the air. It eats between 200 and 250 flies per day, so it is optimized for this job,” explains Frontzek.
The reason a dragonfly can fly the way it does is because each of its four wings can move separately. To replicate these movements, nine small servo motors are used to operate the BionicOpter’s wings. The wing speed and angle, meanwhile, are controlled using sensors and ARM microcontroller. These are all crammed into a small space behind the ribcage. The robot is then operated using a smartphone.
It took 18 months before the BionicOpter could fly through the air like its real-life counterpart. The process was facilitated by the new technology known as 3D printing, which enabled the team to create complex parts more easily. “We assembled during the daytime and tested. If we had failures, we could redesign the parts and print them overnight using a 3D printer,” says Frontzek looking back.
When the BionicOpter was unveiled at Hanover Messe last spring, it caused a global stir. An online video of the robot was viewed more than 840,000 times. The company was bombarded by calls from people asking where they could buy one or whether there was a toy version in the pipeline.
Frontzek says there could be even talk of using it as an unmanned drone for military purposes, but the company is not interested in churning out robot gadgets. “We only want to learn from nature. That does not mean we want to copy nature.”
Frontzek explains that the team gained new knowledge primarily in three key areas while developing the BionicOpter. The robot’s lightness gave the members insight into how to better manufacture carbon fiber frameworks. The flight itself taught the team about how to more efficiently utilize energy. By simultaneously controlling the BionicOpter’s hovering, gliding and flying actions, members learned how to better integrate multiple functions.
Festo has since acquired several patents and now plans to incorporate its new findings into its main factory automation business.
It’s not all about functionality, though. The BionicOpter recreates the beauty of the original, too. It certainly roused the same affection in me as a real dragonfly would. Frontzek smiled when he heard this. It seems insects are not much loved in Europe. Nonetheless, he admitted, it would be hard to tug on people’s heart strings if the robot was just “a gearbox with four wings.”
One of the enduring memories Frontzek has from last spring’s trade fair was the strong sense of wonder the BionicOpter engendered in the women and young people who came to watch it being demonstrated.
“For me, the dragonfly is an ambassador for the latest technology. If it convinces young people to be engineers in the future, this would make me very happy.”
Robotics 