1989年两位麻省理工学院的人工智能研究人员做出了令人恐惧的预测。 罗德尼·布鲁克斯(Rodney Brooks)和安妮塔·弗林(Anita Flynn)写道：“在短短的几年之内，数百万微型机器人或将借助低成本的优势占领地球。”他们在论文《快速，廉价和失控：机器人入侵太阳系》中认为，快速移动、微型自主的昆虫式机器人很快就会变得足够便宜，可以通过规模化解决问题。
Nearly three decades later, those millions of tiny robots have yet to take over, at least not exactly like Brooks and Flynn envisioned. While they were right in some ways—the world has more than 700 million active iPhones—the vision of the fast, autonomous, tiny, buzzing bot is still a dream. Fly-sized bots have mastered liftoff, flight, landing, but all while bound to an outside power source. That is, until now.
近三十年后，地球还没有被这种数以百万计的微型机器人所接管，至少不像布鲁克斯和弗林所设想的那样。虽然他们在某些方面是正确的——目前全世界全球有超过7亿部正在运行的iPhone ——但快速移动，微型自动的昆虫式机器人仍然是一个梦想。不少大规模的飞行机器人已经掌握了升空，飞行，着陆等技能，但都受限于外部电源。至少到现在还是这样。
Sawyer Buckminster Fuller, a mechanical engineering professor from the University of Washington who is not related to the inventor of the geodesic dome, announced on Tuesday that his lab has freed this humming device from the wires that have constrained its range and movements. Instead, the robot has a tiny photovoltaic cell—a mini solar panel—that takes in power from a laser.
本周二华盛顿大学机械工程教授索耶·巴克明斯特·富勒(Sawyer Buckminster Fuller)宣布，他的实验室已经将微型飞行机器人从限制其活动范围和飞行轨迹的导线中解放出来。其实验室开发的新型机器人配置了微型光伏电池——一个迷你太阳能电池板——能够从激光器中获取能量。
Fuller wanted to follow biological principles, which meant deviating from mankind’s most useful invention—the wheel. Most modern electronics, such as the electric engine, rely on some sort of rotary motion. Biology, on the other hand, usually involves more of a undulating pattern. For example, try making a wave with your arms. Next, try to imitate a spinning wheel. Actually, don’t do that, it’s painful. Fuller’s bot has the rapid wing-beating motion of a hummingbird rather than a helicopter.
本周二华盛顿大学机械工程教授索耶·巴克明斯特·富勒(Sawyer Buckminster Fuller)宣布，他的实验室已经将微型飞行机器人从限制其活动范围和飞行轨迹的导线中解放出来。其实验室开发的新型机器人配置了微型光伏电池——一个迷你太阳能电池板——能够从激光器中获取能量。
Though the small scale means that the faux-biological design takes up less power than an equivalent motor, the robot still uses a lot of power. There are no commercially available batteries that produce enough juice to power flight—the batteries for hearing aids are the right size, but too weak, according to Fuller. The laser delivers a higher voltage than what comes out of a US electrical outlet, and only about a quarter of that actually gets to the device. “It’s a pretty inefficient way to get power to the robot, but the robot doesn’t take much power,” says Fuller.
富勒研发的机器人能够像蜂鸟一样飞行，要比等效电机耗电更少，但机器人仍然消耗大量电力。根据富勒的说法，市面上的电池无法为机器人飞行提供足够的动力，比如助听器的电池尺寸虽然合适，但电池容量太小。而激光器提供的电压高于美国电源插座的110V电压，而实际上仅有四分之一的能量能够传到飞行机器人。富勒说：“这是一种非常低效的机器人供电方式，不过好在机器人不会耗费太多的电力。
Now, just because this bot is no longer bound by a wire doesn’t mean it’s going to replace the bees that pollinate your apple orchard. The laser has to be less than seven feet away from the robot in order to give it enough power. And beams of light, unlike wires, are hazardous to human eyeballs, which means that these bots are not going to be free to play Johnny Appleseed any time soon.
当然，采用激光器供电仅仅意味着机器人不再被电线所束缚，并不意味着它能够完全自由飞行。发出的激光必须距离机器人不到7英尺远，以便于提供足够的功率。与电线不同，这种光束对人眼有害。
Outside the lab, insect-sized autonomous robots could prove as practical as their larger counterparts, the drones. Scientists are not likely to solve the power problem any time soon, but these bugs can still be useful in short bursts. Their hoverability allows the bug bots to go on reconnaissance missions that the bigger robots are not well-suited for. “You could take a bunch of them, disperse them to gather local data, and go back to the mothership,” says Xinyan Deng, a bio-inspired robotics researcher at Purdue University.
在实验室之外，昆虫大小的自主机器人可以证明和大型无人机一样实用。科学家们不可能很快解决供电问题，但这些微型机器人在短时间工作内仍然可以发挥作用。其可控性允许微型机器人执行较大机器人不适合的侦察任务。“你可以利用它们收集本地数据，并返回母舰，”普渡大学仿生机器人研究人员Xinyan Deng表示。
The robots of the future could perform surveillance, track down pollutant leaks, and perform search and rescue missions in small, confined spaces. “Nature has evolved for so many millions of years,” says Deng. “We can learn a lot from nature and build these systems to achieve certain goals.” Insects have had 400 million years to evolve—it may take roboticists a few more years to develop equally invasive tiny robots.
未来的机器人可以跟踪监视，追踪污染物泄漏，或者在狭小空间内执行搜索和救援任务。“大自然已经进化了好几百万年，”Deng说，“我们可以学到很多东西，根据自然物的性质构建相应系统以实现某些目标。要知道有些昆虫已经进化了4亿年，我们要开发出同样功能的机器人也需要一定的时间。”
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