There's hardly a shortage of animal inspired robots, but few are as tiny as Harvard's autonomous RoboBee. The robotic insect has been around for a while, but researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering only recently managed a minor breakthrough: controlled flight. Using new manufacturing and design processes, the team has managed to keep the coin-sized bug aloft by independently manipulating the robot's wings with piezoelectric actuators and a delicate control system.

"This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years," explains Professor Robert J Wood, Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "Now that we've got this unique platform, there are dozens of tests that we're starting to do, including more aggressive control maneuvers and landing." There's more to be done, however. The tiny machine still requires a tether for power and control, and researchers are still studying nature to suss out how insects cope with flying through wind and the elements. Eventually, the team hopes to outfit the RoboBee with lightweight batteries, an internal control system and a lighter chassis. For now, however, they're just happy to learned to steer. Check out the insect in action after the break.

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Source: Harvard

This three-fingered manipulator has just about everything you could ever want in a robotic hand. It's relatively low-cost, it's powerful, it's capable of picking up objects both large and small, and it's robust. In fact, we've already seen the thing used as a tee for an aluminum bat. The hand, which was developed by researchers at iRobot, Harvard and Yale, was created as part of DARPA's ARM Hardware (ARM-H), a program track focused on the creation of inexpensive, dexterous hands. According to its creators, the key here is "function rather than trying to mimic a human hand," which helped bring down the cost of building the three-fingered grasper. Check out a video of the Ninja Turtle-esque gripper getting put through its paces -- and strengthening its core with a 50-pound kettle bell -- after the break.

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