Insect vibrations inspire science

Initial developments have already led to some major breakthroughs: the NANOFLY team was the first to use microsystems technologies [1] to manufacture the skeleton of a nanobot with a wingspan of 25 mm. Its design is directly inspired by the order of Diptera, and consists of a support, a mobile part – a tergum and two wings – and a fixed part – the thorax (Fig. 1). The use of optical photolithography and etching processes offers the advantage of being rapid and reproducible, and has led to the production of a skeleton in SU-8 polymer resin with thicknesses ranging from 0.4 mm to 0.3 mm, as well as membranes for the wings in Parylene material and thicknesses equal to 400nm. Just as insects use their muscles to vibrate their thorax and drive their wings at several hundred beats per second, we decided to work with an entirely resonant system, without joints, excited by an electromagnetic actuator and with flexible wings to amplify the movement. In addition, our originality lies in the use of a principle combining two vibratory modes of bending and twisting the wings in phase quadrature [2], to reproduce the appropriate kinematics. Initial tests have demonstrated that a lift force equivalent to the weight of the prototype (22mg) can be obtained, with values of 30° and 15° respectively for the flapping and tilting angles of the wings (Fig.2).