The first item that garnered my interest was “The Army's Remote-Controlled Beetle,” written by Emily Singer and published in the Jan. 29 edition of the MIT Technology Review. It seems that researchers at the University of California have developed a backpack for giant flower beetles. These beetles are quite large for the insect world, weighing in at up to 10 g and topping out at eight cm in length.
Now you may ask why a backpack for a flower beetle? It surely doesn't need one to carry textbooks to school or store healthy snacks as it flies to its favorite flower. No, this backpack is chocked full of electronics along with several electrodes that are connected to the beetle's body.
Inside the backpack are a microprocessor, a radio receiver, and a battery mounted on a tiny PCB. Six electrodes from the pack are implanted into the beetle's optic lobes and flight muscles, according to the article. With this package, scientists can control the beetle's flight via an RF transmitter and a PC.
With the proper input signals, the beetle can be commanded to take off, turn right or left, hover, and land. “Oscillating electrical pulses delivered to the beetle's optic lobes trigger takeoff, while a single short pulse ceases flight. Signals sent to the left or right basilar flight muscles make the animal turn right or left, respectively,” as stated in the article.
Controlling the flight of the flower beetle is relatively simple. It's not necessary to continuously feed signals to activate wing movement, for example, as it is in other insects such as moths. A single signal will trigger the wings to flap, and the beetle will take over naturally from there.
Research for the remote-controlled beetle is funded by DARPA for potential surveillance activities or search-and-rescue operations. For these types of missions, the beetle would be outfitted with a camera and heat sensor.
As for the second item of interest, it seems that a company in Nashville, IN, has developed a system that could reduce the cost of batteries in hybrid and electric cars as well as improve performance. The Multi-Flex™ Energy Management System from Indy Power Systems, www.indypowersytems.com, potentially could cut battery costs by more than 50% per vehicle based on tests conducted on a combination of lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries. The company's president, Steve Tolen, said the savings could well exceed $10,000 per highway vehicle.
The system can accommodate any battery technology—lithium ion, lead acid, fuel cell, and ultracapacitor in any combination—to optimize the energy requirements during all phases of vehicle operation. Acting like a switch under software control, the system can tap into the battery technology that provides the best efficiency for the task at hand which helps minimize the degradation and depletion of the other battery types in the vehicle. The system has been demonstrated in golf carts, and it is being readied for tests in electric highway cars.
Paul Milo
Editorial Director
[email protected]